The Caveman's Call

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds have a new double album out entitled Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. If you're a Cave fan at all, run out and get this one right away.

Cave usually avoids politics, preferring to focus on our travails from either a greater, more universal (and often religious) distance or to come right from the gut at the visceral, loving level. Nonetheless, these lyrics from "Nature Boy"--a Cave original, not to be confused with the Nat King Cole classic--certainly seem timely:

I was just a boy when I sat down
To watch the news on TV
I saw some ordinary slaughter
I saw some routine atrocity
My father said, don’t look away
You got to be strong, you got to be bold, now
He said, that in the end it is beauty
That is going to save the world, now

Rock 'n roll may just save the world yet.