So I didn’t even know this was coming out until an advanced copy of the disc fell into my grubby little hands: Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (Amazon link).

You can grab the single now, and the full disc is available for preorder. This link will take you to the single. Their calling it an EP, but since it’s only 2 songs and a video, I’m calling a single a single.

This disc has been getting heavy play in my iTunes library. Makes me smile. It’s old school Cave. Hard hitting stuff harkening back to “Big Jesus Trash Can” or “The Six Strings That Drew Blood.” This sounds more like a followup Grinderman project than a new Cave and Bad Seeds album, but I don’t mind at all. This isn’t going to displace my favorite Cave discs (“Murder Ballads”
ties with “The Good Son”), but any new Cave can only be a good thing.

“Hold Onto Yourself” is the only song that comes close to being anything like a ballad. But it would seem out of place on “Boatman’s Call” or any other previous disc with perhaps the exception being “No More Shall We Part,” but even there it would come off as b-side material.

My favorite song on the disc is “We Call Upon the Author” (no link yet). I’ve felt this way when reading may a book. The chorus is “We call upon the author to explain.” Yes, often I want ask many a writer, “What were you thinking here?”

Bukowski was a jerk! Berryman was best!
He wrote like wet papiermache, went the Hemingway weirdly on wings and with maximum pain
We call upon the author to explain

Yeah, well, down in my bolthole I see they’ve published another volume of unreconstructed rubbish
“The waves, the waves were soldiers moving”. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you
And again I call upon the author to explain
Yeah, we call upon the author to explain

Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is not overthought or overproduced, it’s got an honesty and rawness that few artists can achieve. This is the usual literary and image packed disc you’d expect from Cave.

Track Listing:

1. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
2. Today’s Lesson
3. Moonland
4. Night Of The Lotus Eaters
5. Albert Goes West
6. We Call Upon The Author
7. Hold On To Yourself
8. Lie Down Here (And Be My Girl)
9. Jesus On The Moon
10. Midnight Man
11. More News From Nowhere