Nick Cave’s early works were monuments of anger built with the chiseling tools of his literate sarcasm and a bitter, violent voice. As he grows older, he’s not mellowing so much as he is focussing that intensity into a more mature and eloquent diatribe. And the focus of that anger seems to be changing. Earlier efforts threw Biblical imagery back in God’s face, and if former lovers have heard his tributes to failed relationships they have probably run for their lives. But on 1997’s The Boatman’s Call, the attacks were as also aimed at his own failures. He confessed doubts, but a desire to believe. The idea of a loving God seemed appealing…unlikely, but definitely appealing. Then came "There is a Kingdom", such an astonishing testimony that I found myself searching the lyrics for a subtext of cynicism. Something was happening to this minstrel of rage.

Now we have No More Shall We Part, Cave’s most beautiful work to date. Yes, beautiful. On Let Love In Cave downshifted from harsh punk rock to grand anthems. On The Boatman’s Call he shifted suddenly again, quieting into a slow burn, shifting emphasis from caustic guitar to pondrous piano. Now, the piano is the center, and Cave is finding that he has surprising range as a serious singer when the guitars back off and give him room to maneuver. The title track reveals a voice that’s more Bryan Ferry than Bono. Musically, the Bad Seeds don’t seem to mind the ever-deepening ocean of Cave’s chords. They have their opportunities to unleash their acidic guitar tantrums, and they carry them out with a holy terror.

Thematically, the album deals with the problem of evil. Each song is like a short story, each central character dismayed at how the world is dying at the claws of evil, how his own body and heart are collapsing the same way, and devastated over lost or failing loves. Take a cup of Raymond Carver, pour into a crust of Edgar Allen Poe, and you’ll have some idea. Love is woven throughout , a power as wounding as it is redemptive.

Lyrics that sound at first like stories about the resilience of love, ultimately become stories about the weight of bearing love’s cross ("The Sorrowful Life", the title track.) We are ushered through a tour of joyless marriages, a self-righteous and prejudice-filled fundamentalist church, and old men staggering after unfulfilled fantasies until they need to call for the nurse. The nurse is a recurring character, a help for impotent and sour old men. In "Hallelujah", old and diseased, he breaks loose from the hospital and seeks out an illicit affair, if only to feel the adrenalin rush of lust again; but he is held back by his conscience, the memory of the nurse who has been so faithful in caring for his needs. 

In "Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow", he offers as direct a challenge to God’s ideas of mercy and justice as Tom Waits’ recent lament "Where is Georgia Lee?" In it, the snow becomes the symbol of all that lies between people, all that stifles and suffocates feeble human efforts at goodness.   He sings, "I waved to my neighbour/My neighbour waved to me/But my neighbour/is my enemy/I kept waving my arms/Till I could not see/Under fifteen feet of pure white snow..."  Later in the song, he sings "I've been paralyzed by a lack offeeling/I can't even find anything worth stealing...."  If Cave is learning to address God as an individual instead of a lie, he’s not going happily.   He concludes, "Raise your hands up to the sky/ Is it any wonder?/ Oh my lord...."  Is he appealing to God, or cursing him?  It reminds me of Robert DeNiro being interviewed on In the Actor’s Studio answering the question, ‘What would you like to hear from God?’ by saying "He’s got a lot to answer for."

But this is not arrogance. Sometimes in mid-song, the sermons about the world break open into a cry of the singer’s own failings. Like the Psalmist who begins calling for God’s judgment on the world, soon he is realizing the inevitable judgment that will fall upon him for his own sins, and it’s time to cry for mercy. "The ladders of life that we scale merrily/Move mysteriously around/So that when you think you're climibng up man/In fact you're coming down/Into the hollows of glamour, where with spikes and hammer/With telescopic camera, they chose to turn the screw...Oh Lord Oh my Lord/How have I offended thee?  Wrap your tender arms round me..."

In "As I Sat Sadly By Her Side" and "Gates of the Garden", the singer slowly realizes that redemptive love enters the world through personal exchanges of love between God’s children. The woman in the earlier of the two songs urges him to cease judging the world outside the window, and the implication is clear: here is an opportunity for beauty and for love, right here right now. Later, in "Love Letter", he composes a lament for the opportunity to love that has been lost.