NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS The Boatman's Call Reprise AFTER A CAREER spent tearing down the world with horror and disgust--from his early days in the Birthday Party up to last year's grisly (and often humorous) Murder Ballads, Nick Cave finally sounds ready to start rebuilding from scratch. Where the only alternative is to cease existing, he's begun to find a quiet grace, and perhaps even beauty, past all the darkness that's long consumed him. Amidst the ashes of a world unable to exorcise its demons, Nick actually finds love; a strange, twisted, doomed love, perhaps--but love nevertheless. On The Boatman's Call, Cave's latest collection, the singer/songwriter finds room for the personal, the spiritual, and even the hopeful in his gray psyche. With only the sparest accompaniment--often just a piano, organ, light percussion, and violin (care of Dirty Three's Warren Ellis)--Cave employs tradition at folk-song structure and simplicity to weave tales made sad not so much by tragedy as by emptiness. Sure, Cave can be overly dramatic and clichéd--and plenty think he's full of shit--but if you buy all the gloom and doom, it can be quite affecting. Songs like "Into My Arms" and "(Are You) The One That I've Been Waiting For?" are among Cave's most self-assured and soulful to date. Ultimately, The Boatman's Call sounds like Cave's attempt to poison his cake and eat it too. For a record so resolute in its denial of divinity (the album's striking first line is "I don't believe in an interventionist God"), The Boatman's Call's obsession with religious themes and imagery might seem contradictory if it hadn't come from someone like Cave, who fancies himself a fallen angel searching for a ladder back to heaven. Where gothic meets cathedral, there (for better or worse) resides our dark Saint Nick. --Roni Sarig KENNY RANKIN Peaceful: The Best Of Kenny Rankin Rhino Records DON'T HOLD IT against Rankin that he wrote Helen Reddy's "Peaceful"--really, he's done better. While he's never been considered a jazz vocalist nor classified himself as such, he definitely fits the criteria. And like another '70s peer, Richie Havens, he's a master at radically reinterpreting someone else's music (a couple Beatles tunes and doowop classics here) to fit his own guitar style. "Haven't We Met" and "In The Name Of Love" are complex, up-tempo pieces that make the music of most acoustic guitarist/ songwriters sound pretty unsophisticated by comparison. From another perspective, if you're not depressed enough over the fact that You'll Probably Never Get Laid Again, and needing a bit of top-drawer Frampton-era balladry to put you over the edge, this is definitely the stuff. Evidently Rankin's presently recording in Rio with a load of Brazilian stars, which sounds like a promising match. --Dave McElfresh ONYAS Get Shitfaced With ... Au Go Go IF YER BALLS swell to the size of cantaloupes when you hear the merciless punk onslaught of Aussie power trios like the Cosmic Psychos, Hard-Ons and Feedtime, you'll smack your lips over the testosterone-fueled rock action of fellow brutes, the Onyas. Beer guzzlin' slobs who can drink a 12-pack of Fosters faster than the rapid-fire bursts of distortion-ravaged Armageddon explode all over Get Shitfaced With..., the Onyas are more in synch with the drunken stun-punk bluntness of the Psychos than the punk-pop thrashings of the Hard-Ons. But they're also capable of whacking you upside the head with the chug-a-lug speed and heaviness of Feedtime's jackhammer deconstruction. So grab a case of brew, slap this sucker in the CD player and get shitfaced with the Onyas. --Ron Bally

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