Some mornings you wake with a song in your head.
Unless they’re your partner, it’s rare you wake with the idea of a person in your head.

This morning I woke with a rolling video of Nick Cave’s stage-swagger in my head. Admittedly, I’ve been making my way through his back catalogue for a couple of months now but it’s been with a mild academic interest.

That was until now. I’d listened to No More Shall We Part many times before starting my back-catalogue climbing. I’d always thought it an excellent collection of songs but not one of my favourite albums.

I was wrong.

It has all the vicious self-destruction of Tender Prey; that touch of classicism that Murder Ballads gave us without any of the difficult matching of voice, voices and composition; the stadium filling numbers of Nocturama but with a real sense of knowing what loss is unabashed and with less early-Cave-arrogance than ever before – perhaps so much so that it sets the stage for The Lyre of Orpheus; and longing.

The album’s title belies the utter depth of longing evident in the simple fiddle movements on ‘Sweetheart Come’, the dark tones evident in the early slow piano “…tending her flowers” of The Sorrowful Wife, and even within the casual suburban crime of Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow – though menacing – is a sense of longing for escape.

No More Shall We Part in fact says “Please. Please let this be the marker that means we shall part no more.”