It's that time of the year again. I'll forsake an intro in favour of a conclusion this time round, seems to fit this format better; and gives me more time to take stock of the year.

10. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

So, what hasnt been said about Dig...? Much has been made - and with good reason - of long-time guitarist/pianist Blixa Bargeld's departure, and the cathartic release of side project Grinderman. Perhaps freed of Bargeld's dislike for rock conventions, Cave proceeded to pick up the guitar and churn out one the most bellowing, angsty blues-rock albums in recent memory. Stripped of the piano polish that came with double-LP Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, Cave and band continue with their newfound momentum and passion, married to the wit and literary focus of vintage Nick Cave.
Dig... is in parts an unhinged, swaggering rocker where guitars puncture an otherwise impenetrable wall of distortion, and in parts an eerie, atmospheric balladeer with strings and organs imitating toxin clouds. It's a sonic marvel that a record held together by shakes, rattles, and dissonant rumbles remains so focused and resolute. Lyrics are wicked, with the requisite religious slant. Cave may be a wordsmith in the mould of Morrissey, but his penchant for destructive sexuality and tortured Biblical overtones makes his work much more effective at unsettling. That Cave is a first-class enunciator provides his words - the metaphors and couplets, the cast of characters he conjures, the lit critic namedrops - with the delivery - from a sardonic drawl to a passionate whisper to a downright ballsy growl - they require to be convincing.
Many will regard Dig..., and haunting, hallucinatory closer More news from Nowhere in particular, as a definitive summary of Cave's career and tortured genius. But more than that, it represents a collective voice of human frustration and decadence - the intellectual bewildered with the Bible while questioning his own fascination, the everyman inability to reconcile the need for suffering, the tapestry of palliation one weaves around oneself whether in imagery, characterization, or enforced opinion. As Cave sings, "It's strange in here..Yeah, it gets stranger every year." Whether a lamentation or a snivel, who's gonna argue with that?

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so goes the backing track of all the sighs we ever sighed