more new Nick Cave

Here is a BBC 6 radio interview and broadcast of the new song "Lie Down Here" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.  Nick Cave does a charming interview, no matter what his music is like these days.  The song itself... has potential, reminds me a bit of Let Love In era stuff, the more rocking songs.  But there's a lifelessness to it that permeates much of the rock and roll that he's done recently, and I think I've finally figured out what it is that bothers me.  James Johnston's guitar playing is competent rock guitar work, but no more than that, and it diminishes the overall sound, makes it bland.  Even his wild bits are perfectly predictable in their notes and timing.  I'm not sure that I would say Blixa is exactly what I miss, because I know the other Bad Seeds are capable of great things, but I miss the adventurous, off-kilter, occasionally even off-putting melodic lines of the past.  Even Nick Cave's piano playing on The Boatman's Call and No More Shall We Part, unaccomplished as it was, had an appeal in its lack of slickness.  It's probably not fair of me to blame everything on the new guitarist, because he's pretty much a hired gun, as far as I can tell.  But perhaps it's awfully telling that the Bad Seeds now include a hired gun and are no longer a synergy of talents collaborating and clashing at the right time and the right place.  That one subservient note is enough to transform the sound from battling stallions to matched and lined carriage horses, and it's just not as compelling, no matter how fancy the carriage might be.

Did an upper body workout last night with my therabands.  I found I was generally stronger than I expected, but my external shoulder rotators are very weak.  I had already suspected as much, but now I know for sure.  So, something to work on.