Breathless – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

I first heard Nick Cave when I caught a live video of “The Mercy Seat,” a song from his 1988 album with the Bad Seeds called Tender Prey. I ended up buying the CD a couple years later and became really thrilled by its harsh, bluesy sound.

This post isn’t about that album, but rather about a single I chanced upon when the Tower Records on Broadway was having its going-out-of-business sale last year (it was a pretty gruesome thing, a bit like watching a beached whale carcass rot away or something).

Anyway, I was digging through a bin of assorted singles of mostly appalling quality—A little Avril Lavigne, some bad neo-soul, you know the stuff—when I came across a sort of creamy blue colored one with a little picture of a robin sitting in a tree on the front. Turns out it was a single for the song “Breathless,” from Cave’s last outing with the Seeds, 2004’s double LP Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. It was ninety-nine cents or something so I grabbed it, not really having any expectations.

I should have had some. On the strength of this song I eventually bought Abattoir and it’s one of my favorite albums of the decade. That said, “Breathless” is pretty much an anomaly in the Nick Cave catalog (or at least what I’ve heard of it). I still prefer the mix on the single to the version on the album, since it nixes an ear-splitting spaghetti of flute runs in the intro, but what makes the song stand out from the rest of Cave’s tunes is the fact that it’s just a really sweet, ambling pop song. It's got a great groove and some awesome, soulful backing vocals too (something far from uncommon when the Bad Seeds are involved). Nick Cave’s also a master lyricist, tempering themes ranging from the political to the personal with dark stories filled with violence and ribaldry that somehow end up having hilarious punch lines. On “Breathless,” however, he sticks to a more traditional approach, and you get a glimpse of Nick Cave the romantic poet, spinning idyllic lines like “it’s up in the morning, it’s on the downs, little white clouds just like gamboling lambs, and I am breathless over you.”

I’ll shut up now and you can listen, whoever you are:

Breathless (Alternative Mix)