From ‘From Her to Eternity’ to…?Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ Albums Officially Ranked

OK, first off we all have to admit how ridiculous it is to rank The Bad Seeds’ albums, chiefly because of the fact that the form demands that certain albums need to be ranked toward the bottom of the list and be therefore deemed the band’s ‘worst’ albums or in some way ‘substandard’. Albums you or other weirdos like you might deem their favourites may well prop up the list and you may receive a jolting shock to your cultural sacks that you likely won’t recover from. The reason this list is likely to offend more than similar ones is because over the course of their nearly 30 years career The Bad Seeds have never released a bad album. I’d argue that they’ve never released even a subpar one. No, that one you’re thinking of? Get over yourself, that has brilliant moments and is number thirteen. The worst/least brilliant albums by The Bad Seeds would still be career highlights of lesser contemporaries like Pearl Jam or The Cure or The Beastie Boys. Just see this as 16 Bad Seeds albums ranked in order of their amazingness. If number 16 is your personal favourite, then your personal favourite is still an amazing album. Just be aware that ‘your personal favourite’ is subjective, while this list is official and objective. So it’s the 16th best. As long as you’re cool with that.

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Perhaps my own personal perspective has to come into this. I first encountered Wavey Cavey and his Stinky Eggs as a precocious and hormonally operated  thirteen year old with 1997’s The Boatman’s Call. This has probably meant that my entire idea of Nicholas and his Naughty Nuts has been through the frame of an achingly beautiful smack addict singing delicate odes to PJ Harvey (and probably, let’s face it, smack). If you’re disgustingly old enough to first come across The Bad Seeds when they first set sail in the 1980s- or even through Cave’s previous band The Birthday Party– then…

Well, then first of all you really are too old and decrepit to possess any worthwhile opinions. Your should be ashamed of your advancing years and retreat into functional alcoholism. I’m not explicitly saying that you should kill yourself, I’m just making sure that you’re aware that your death will have no real impact on the wider world and on a functional level you may as well kill yourself. OK? Good. Glad that we all understand.

Also, approaching  The Bad Seeds from an ‘OG’ perspective may lead you to rate his earlier none more goth albums- the ones that are occasionally punctuated with distorted screams of “THE ORGAN GRINDER’S MONKEY FUCK’S THE VIRGIN MARY BLOODY CUNT WITH A RUSTY CRUCIFIX!”, and the like- a lot higher than I have. That’s cool. We’re all friends. But, scientifically, I’m correct and you’re wrong. And horrendously old. Seriously, what’s that smell? Oh. It’s you. That’s just what old people smell like. Ew.

Before we start, a few rules:

Continue reading “From ‘From Her to Eternity’ to…?Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ Albums Officially Ranked”

82 Ash Koosha: ‘Return 0’

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The human race is kind of resigned to losing all of it’s jobs to robots. In their March 2017 paper, ‘Robots and Jobs: Evidence from the UK Labour Market‘, Acemoglu and Restrepo found that the addition of one more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to population ratio by about 0.18 – 0.34 percentage points and wages by 0.25 – 0.5 percent.

Of course, I wouldn’t be the widely lauded and routinely celebrated investigative journalist that I am if I didn’t investigate their findings and see if such statistics could be replicated in the UK job market. Unfortunately, Manchester Refugee Support Network only employs 5 people, so in order to get a proper reading on effect on one robot per one thousand employees I had to measure the effect of

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one two hundredth of a robot on our work. I think. There’s really no way of knowing exactly what the maths are, but that’s what I did so it has to be correct.

It’s hard to truly say what would represent 0.5% of a robot, but my contacts in the robots industry* tell me that equates to roughly a robot eyeball. With this in mind, I introduced a fully automated eyeball to the office at MRSN. Well, I initially assumed it was a fully automatic robotic eyeball, but later examinations have suggested it may in fact be closer to a chocolate ball wrapped in tinfoil. Again, there really is no way of actually knowing, but talks conducted with my contacts in the scientific research industry* have confirmed that this trivial matter should have had no effects on the findings.

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2 Bon Iver: 22, A Million

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first: I’ve always pronounced it ‘Bon Ivor’

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Because of this I set up a Google Alert to tell me when somebody finally made a ‘Bon Iver the Engine’ meme, as I truly believed that such a witty reference to both an ultra hipster musical act and an old children’s’ show would truly bring the world together in these troubled times

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No, but apparently he’s one of those ultra-hipster tossers who chooses to pretentiously pronounce his name the way it’s spelled, so the reference is lost

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3 Let’s Eat Grandma: I, Gemini

‘I, Gemini’ is a perfect encapsulation of why it is I love music

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Let’s Eat Grandma (great name +1) are two Norwich girls who…

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I think I’m allowed to refer to them as such, they were only 16 and 17 years old when they released this album

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No, honestly, and if they were in their 40s, or 30s, or even 20s they simply wouldn’t have been able to make an album as supernaturally beautiful as this

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4 The Hotelier: Goodness

‘Goodness’ starts with a fucking poem

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Picture the scene: you’ve returned home after a hard day investment banking and immediately retired to the smoking library. You’ve taken off your driving gloves, unclipped the ‘Shaguar’ cufflinks that were already painfully dated when your laundry maid got you them for Christmas years ago, thrown on your smoking jacket, lit up a Silver Vogue Lucky Strike and reclined in the leather push back ready to hear the new collection by young upstarts The Hotelier

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(erm, that’s honestly the record cover, I’m not just being weird…)

You are greeted by a nerdy and presumably privileged white guy explaining to you how he deserves your pity and attention because he once fell in a pond when he was younger. In a fucking poem

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You are enveloped by dismay, the world is terrible, people are shit and make shit music, despair is the only feeling that washes over you

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Then the first song starts…

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5 Kid Cudi: Passion, Pain and Dragon Slayin’

Last/this year, the DWP decided that I was no longer a disabled person, and I was moved off the ESA benefit and instead afforded the honour of beta testing Universal Credit and informed there were no barriers to me gaining employment

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I volunteer at a lot of immigration and refugee charities- because, ladies, I’m everything you’ve ever fucking dreamed of- and was sure to inform the Job Centre of my shifts, as I believed they were important in me gaining experience in both employment and immigration law, which I have decided is where my future lies

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I was told to stop volunteering though, as it would interfere with me getting a proper job, as the welfare system in this country is solely based on stopping you being a parasite of state funds. So, I just stopped telling the Job Centre of my four days a week volunteering (God, I am such a fucking awesome person) and while I slowly (and thus far successfully) made my way toward earning the relevent qualifications I made sure to keep the JC happy by applying for one job a day that I has little intention or likelihood of getting

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=6 Jenny Hval: Blood Bitch

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Women are gross, aren’t they?

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I learned this week- from a mate who’s got a cousin whose mate swears he saw an internet video of it- that girls can actually bleed out of their noo-noo when the mood takes them!

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Daniel- who’s the mate who has a cousin who has a mate who reckons he’s actually seen it– says that they can only do it when the moon’s full, or summat. Fucking weird

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And yet still you have the existence of ‘menstrala’, crazy chicks actually making art out of their disgusting habit, like it’s something to be proud of!!

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8 Danny Brown: Atrocity Exhibition

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…and within the first minute of this masterpiece record you’re introduced pretty comprehensively to Mr Brown’s modus operandi: he’s crude, he’s explicit, he’s in pain resulting from his own excess, he’s a little bit funny, he’s a horrifying train wreck, he’s absolutely captivating

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‘Modus operandi’ is a Latin word literally meaning ‘the mode of the octopus’, as the ancient Romans believed the fact that the creature was able to manage with eight legs meant it must be an uncommonly focused animal

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Not done one of those for a while, have I?

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9 Against Me: Shape Shift With Me

Honesty, this wasn’t intentional, it just so happens that music’s two most famous ‘chicks-with-dicks-or-maybe-not-we-don’t-know-and-why-is-it-considered-appropriate-to-debate-their-genitalia-it’s-not-like-Harrison-Ford-goes-on-Letterman-and-the-entire-interview-is-solely-based-on-the-precise-make-up-of-his-genitals-and…

Fucking hell… I’m starting this again, can you delete all that?

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Honestly, this wasn’t intentional, it just so happens that music’s two most famous transexuals ended up on this list together, I’m not operating some bizarre segregation, and if you look back at the list you won’t see that I’ve grouped all the Norwegians, all the Bronies, and all the Abecedarians together

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10 ANOHNI*: Hopelessness

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As a culture, we westerners are still not 100% ‘OK’ with transgendered people

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I mean, obviously: we’re not even close to 100% accepting homosexuality. We pat ourselves on the back every time a country legalises gay marriage, but it speaks volumes that every country bar Ireland didn’t dare put it to a vote, and you have to wonder how much bigger that 38% opposition would be if the people of Britain and America were polled

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