Nick Cave has assembled one of the most singular and emotionally fearless catalogs in modern music. Across four decades (often with The Bad Seeds), he has navigated love, violence, faith, grief, reinvention, and something approaching transcendence, often all within the same song.
Adam Steiner’s book DARKER WITH THE DAWN: Nick Cave’s Songs of Love and Death takes on the ambitious task of tracing that evolution across eras, albums, and emotional states. Originally published in hardback and now reissued in paperback and audiobook by Bloomsbury, the book offers a deep dive into Cave’s work that feels both analytical and deeply personal.
I spoke with Adam about revisiting the book, Cave’s ongoing reinvention, the rupture of grief-era records like Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen, and why Cave’s music continues to matter.
Generation Mixtape (GM): It’s been a couple of years since Darker With the Dawn was first published. What made you want to circle back to the book now, and did revisiting it change how you see Cave’s work or your own relationship to it?
Adam: I love him even more now. I had the classic turn-off phase when I couldn’t listen to the records anymore. I was too close to it all and immersed too far up my own analysis, so I lost all distance as a casual fan. I’m glad to say that I am born again, and find much to enjoy across all the albums.
I’m struck again by the depth of the lyrics. Cave always mines similar territory, but I’ve never understood the notion that he is a depressing songwriter. To me, he’s always found so much joy and exuberance and ferocity in doom and death. He is melancholy throughout, but you don’t get that level of depth and shift from many songwriters, certainly [not] today.
Cave is a classicist, but he’s also been able to reinvent that into his own form/persona/mode, there is no-one like the Bad Seeds–avant-garde, anthemic, anti-musical at the risk of becoming deft–and that is a legacy to treasure. I’m happy Bloomsbury had the foresight to give the book a second, third life as a more affordable paperback and audiobook–because that’s how so many of us read these days…
GM: I know you touch on this early in the book, but for readers coming to it fresh, could you talk a bit about your personal entry point with Nick Cave? Where did your fandom begin, and what initially pulled you in deeply enough to sustain a project of this scope?
Yes, I listened to early Nick Cave at university, The Carny, Tender Prey and From Her To Eternity – it didn’t move me that much – but much later I was really struck by the Push The Sky Away album when it came out in 2013. It was a real departure and a breath of fresh of air for the band–a true step beyond. And I think it earned them a new legion of fans, particularly younger listeners. It’s a really important album for me, because it transcended some of the schtick of the Nick Cave persona, which is great fun, but it manages to stand outside of the band’s history.
GM: One of the things that really struck me is how comprehensive the book feels, not just across albums but across eras, themes, and emotional states. When you started writing, did you have a clear sense of the structure and scope, or did the book expand as you followed Cave’s evolution?
Damn good question! I initially wanted to write a different book, focussing more on the loose trilogy of Push The Sky Away, Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen. In the end, this would come to occupy the latter third of the book – my favourite part. But I felt it would be less than half the story not to talk about the early Bad Seeds, because they were so weird and different and gravitating around Cave’s nexus of Christian spirituality, murder, lust, and the traditional love song, then the band had their mid-to-late continued run of great albums, so there was a lot to cover there. I knew I couldn’t embrace it all in one go, and I find the forced chronology of life a bit boring, so I just went all out with the major themes and how the music jumps around revisits these ideas.
GM: You frame Cave’s catalog as a continuous process of reinvention rather than a series of disconnected phases. Was there a particular moment or record where that idea really crystallized for you?
As mentioned, Push The Sky Away is a big point of departure. I feel there is definitely a split between new and old Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. Although, it’s not entirely as simple as Warren Ellis joining, or Blixa or Mick Harvey leaving, for example. It’s more about Nick Cave evolving beyond the weight of his discography and, for me, hitting a new peak in his songwriting.
Push The Sky Away manages to be really succinct but stylistically strange – it’s his Kid A. There is little of the fire and brimstone bombast, although “Higgs Boson Blues” follows in a similar vein, albeit drastically updated, the songs are way more sinuous, freeform. “Jubilee Street” almost sounds like a ballad but has this great coda that foreshadows the album’s title track.
So Cave is able to transcend more of the verse-chorus structures of old, to be more boldly impressionistic. Then when you get to Skeleton Tree (a fair portion of which was written and recorded before Arthur’s death), we get these circling, cyclical song patterns. “Rings Of Saturn” and “Girl In Amber” are really beautiful songs that don’t seem to go anywhere, or explode in a frenzy, but they still have a fierce intent behind them that stays ringing in your ears.
GM: The death of Cave’s son Arthur in 2015 feels like a profound rupture, both personally and artistically, and it weighs heavily over Skeleton Tree (probably my personal favorite post-2000 Cave record). How do you view that album now within the broader arc of his career, and what do you think it reveals about grief as a creative force?
It’s a tricky album to love, not that it’s necessarily bleak, but it evades the definitions of safe, easy music and as a holistic set of songs. It works more on mood and texture, rather than a chant or sing-along melody that Cave had practiced so well in the past on something like “Ship Song.” It was Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen that saw people demand a return to the ‘old’ Bad Seeds, which is a bit of a misnomer. Despite Cave’s recurring lyrical preoccupations, the Bad Seeds always shifted onwards a little bit with each record, this has them really experimenting as mature artists and players, knowing when to step in and out of a song, less is more. Laying on extra guitar noise or louder drums just breaks it.
I think Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen meet as the period within grief and grieving, being deep in that difficult place where you can see a way out or a life beyond loss. And Ghosteen becomes the aftermath, [where] Cave has arrived at a new place, making an accord with what has happened to him, and learning to live alongside it.
I would never try to speak on someone’s behalf, this is just what I observed through the Red Hand Files and the Faith book, but also what I felt from the records, which is highly subjective. There is much celebration of life and a kind farewell on Ghosteen. It’s almost harder, because the overriding message is that beauty and kindness won’t save us from the random cruelty of humanity, but they help us confront suffering, which is inevitable. Of course Cave hints towards a transcendent afterlife, which not many of us would believe in these days, but it’s interesting to hear that perspective on things, on an album.
GM: Cave experienced another devastating loss with the death of his son Jethro in 2022. With the benefit of hindsight, how do you see these personal tragedies reshaping his later work, not just thematically, but in terms of tone, restraint, and spiritual outlook?
Cave has spoken of a youthful arrogance towards life and the world, and implicitly death, in that he held life cheaply, as we all do when we’re younger, feeling invincible, not knowing much about what the future holds for us. So Cave’s outlook has shifted in very extreme ways that make sense given his experiences, but come across as almost mystical, which I can’t fully understand unless you’ve been there yourself.
Losing a child seems like an unbearable weight to live with, and to go on living well. Clearly Cave has found his own way, which is beautiful and terrifying, but I would never claim to understand it myself. Accordingly, his music has changed along with his outlook. I found Ghosteen equally inspiring and frightening, just because Cave stripped away louder instruments. It’s full of tension and resolution, like a constant push and pull wave.
GM: You position Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen as something closer to a new language than a stylistic shift. Do you consider this period among Cave’s strongest work, and if so, what makes it resonate so deeply compared to earlier eras?
For me, yes, definitely. Skeleton Tree was striking for its austere mode, lots of moody drums and bass, itchy guitars, shiny synths. It had a real dark edge with not much of the romance that made Push The Sky Away so accessible. But also the lyrics are really interesting, there is no concession to the audience, Cave is letting rip with really strange structures.
“Anthrocene” was one of the first songs I wrote about. It reminded me of William Golding’s novel, The Inheritors, this came right after Lord Of The Flies, and talks about the clash between neanderthal man and the first humans, evolution and natural selection in action. The song conjures up that kind of primal fear, the real dark ages of sun and fire, and how small we are as people, set against something like environmental collapse.
Now, that might not be what Cave meant, but the listener is important – I got so much from the song which is really abstract, and I felt, maybe Cave was describing his own isolated vulnerable feeling of being lost in the darkness, unable to find some light or a way out.
As I say in the book, Ghosteen connects to this, but I don’t think anyone expected this kind of album from Nick Cave, let alone, just a few short years after the loss of Arthur. There is nothing quite like it, musically, so personal and with such transcendent lyrics, you feel his feet are barely touching the ground, certainly when you learn more about the recording process with just Cave and Warren Ellis.
GM: Cave is an artist who actively resists fixed interpretation and often speaks about danger, uncertainty, and risk in the creative process. As a critic and writer, how do you balance close analysis with that ambiguity that Cave seems so intent on preserving?
I think Cave has a clear-through line of his major themes: love, death and loss – and the rest – but I think he plays so much with ambiguity of intent. How serious, or orthodox, a Christian is he, where does he draw the line in his treatment of women and why is he so often drawn to such morbid preoccupations. Critically I try to walk the line between Cave’s songs and the man himself, which is further muddied by the persona he uses, which almost all artists have to employ for various reasons. So I would never try to claim that I have the main nerve of the Truth; I’m offering a studied interpretation of the music and drawing out the parallels with Cave’s ongoing preoccupations, what he talks about in interviews, influences he draws upon and stylistic progression within the Bad Seeds.
All that being said, Cave has a strong sense of humour and irony, sometimes its something to hide behind and deflect criticism, but equally he has that strong Australian sense of getting over yourself and self-effacement, he is only the hero of his songs half of the time; the rest he seems happy to be the villain.
GM: After spending so much time living inside Cave’s songs of love, death, faith, and grief, what do you think his work continues to offer listeners now, especially in a time when uncertainty and loss feel so pervasive?
That’s a difficult one; trying to be both is a hard act to follow. The Nick Cave we listen to now and see in concerts is a greatly changed person. That doesn’t mean you can reject and forget the past; choosing when and where to remember, our actions and choices hold us to account. I would only say mellowed in the sense that Cave wants to be the edgy angry performer, but that seems more of an act, more deliberate. Those early Bad Seeds albums are so weird and freakish–it’s fantastic and fantastical to witness such a melange of ideas and characters.
From there the band hit a mid-career stride of really great writing and musicianship–see the range of the Abattoir Blues double album–so there is a lot for listeners to discover and explore, and these don’t always feel like the same artist, which is really interesting, because they remain undeniably Nick Cave–and that’s what people keep returning to.
GM: And finally, care to share a top-5 list?
5: PUSH THE SKY AWAY (2013)
The album that took the band to the next level. Before, so much of their music was for die-hards, the band was always on the alternative edge and making strides into the mainstream. This record dials everything down and just shapes really strong considered song where no element: piano, or loudness or the more edgy goth elements of The Bad Seeds dominates. It’s a really considered balanced album, nothing outstays its welcome, and it stays with you.
4: LYRE OF ORPHEUS/ABATTOIR BLUES (2004)
A huge double-album of great invention and variety. It’s never boring, always invigorating; the band did a lot of improv and recorded mostly live and you feel that big energy in the room. Cave is funny, tragic, learned–it really does have it all.
3: THE BOATMAN’S CALL (1997)
A huge sea change from the Bad Seeds of old. Cave firmly established himself as a singer-songwriter, where before I think his piano was often another rhythm track. This was foreshadowed by tracks like The Ship Song, but these songs are way more personal and inventive, strange shapes and still The Bad Seeds a great backing ensemble knowing when to step in and out of a song.
2: NO MORE SHALL WE PART (2001)
Not everyone’s favourite, it can seem repetitive and overlong, but again, Cave makes a leap from The Boatman’s Call, now married, more mature, he embraces the love song not as tragic farewell but a new dawn in his life. He’s never looked back from this moment.
1: YOUR FUNERAL, MY TRIAL (1986)
Cave cited this as The Bad Seeds’ favourite album (in 2009) it’s very dark and strange, but really unique. It contains some of his strongest early songs (Sad Waters, Stranger Than Kindness and the title track) really elegant and foreboding, by all accounts the band were somewhat on the edge in Berlin and this is the result.
Adam Steiner is a writer, journalist and poetry film-maker. He has written a novel, Politics Of The Asylum, and three books of music criticism on Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie and Nick Cave. He runs a quarterly poetry-film screening Living With Buildings and in 2017 completed the Disappear Here poetry-film project about Coventry Ringroad.
Darker With The Dawn — Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death is out now on hardback, paperback and audiobook from Bloomsbury
IG: @AdamSteinerAuthor
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