However great Nick Cave undoubtedly is, it's also true that his shadowy cohorts The Bad Seeds have been vital in shaping what has become one of THE essential back catalogues in rock. Within their ranks, greatness surely stirs, whether it's in Conway Savage's consummate professionalism, Martyn Casey's stoic presence, Warren Ellis's flights of string-led fancy or even in the now-departed Blixa Bargeld's occasional dissonant brilliance.
Yet, there's one man who's been singularly instrumental in binging out the best of Nick Cave's career. No, you rarely read interviews with him or see him singled out in pictures, but he's played guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and more over the years. He supplies crucial background vocals; he arranges a lot of the material and its' his input that ultimately seems to tip the scales.
You've guessed by now that we're discussing MICK HARVEY: a right-hand man par excellence who's finally made the transition to centre-stage in his spare time with - if you don't count a string of fine film soundtracks - his debut album, the really very fine "One Man's Treasure."
Indeed, while it's not hard to imagine that Harvey sings and plays virtually everything on this record (bar the exhilarating, swooping strings), it's difficult to imagine that "One Man's Treasure" was conceived mostly by the man himself at his home studio, mostly as something Harvey was "doing to entertain myself", because the end results are every bit as captivating as anything his regular band have released. And yes, that's saying something, I agree.
Yet Harvey scarcely puts a foot wrong. It's a brave man who opts to open his debut album with a cover of a Lee Hazlewood song, but Harvey's fantastic version of "First St.Blues" is debauched, debonair and works beautifully when buoyed up by Harvey's confident, suave vocal and the glorious, keening strings.
Strike one. And there's plenty more of this calibre when Harvey digs into equally discerning songbooks by the likes of Tim Buckley, Guy Clark, Jeffrey Lee Pierce and (inevitably) his associates Nick Cave and Conway Savage. If it's a brave man who takes on Lee Hazlewood, I'd generally confirm that only a lunatic would dip into Tim Buckley's catalogue, yet Harvey's take of "The River" is a spectacularly dark, Calexico-ish success and a classic example of how, if you can't beat 'em, you can always menace 'em into submission.
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Elsewhere, Guy Clark's wordy "Hank Williams Said It Best" is humourously fatalistic, while Mick's version of Nick Cave's "Come Into My Sleep" is an enigmatic come-on shadowed beautifully by the circular organ refrain. Possibly better still, mind, is a resonant cover of The Gun Club's brooding "Mother Of Earth": a song, which - lest we forget - helped to invent modern-day Americana long before that term was even a glint in the critics' beady eyes.
All of these are great, and Harvey's gravelly, experience-fuelled take of Conway Savage's "Demon Alcohol" ("C'mon, I need a drink and how, I need the hair of the dog right now") even approaches the clunking, dissonant blues of old-style Bad Seeds, complete with the odd Blixa-style guitar scrape. Funnily enough, though, however tremendous all of these are, it's arguably two of Harvey's own compositions that hit home the hardest of all. The first of these, "Man Without A Home" is beautifully poised and poetic and, by the time the string-kissed tale (autobiographical?) of a man "condemned to roam, along the backroads of his soul" reaches its' climax, it would surely win the approval of Mr.Cave himself. The yearning, dignified "Will You Surrender?", meanwhile, is as good a closer as you could hope for. It's persuaded along by strings and vibrato guitar and makes like the perfect way to be ushered out into the long, black night.
In conclusion, then, this is a magnificent album and quite a shock to the system for those (like myself) who assumed Mick Harvey would remain one of rock's finest perennial sidemen. Bearing in mind Nick Cave continues to mine a rich seam of form, we perhaps shouldn't expect more in a hurry, but hell, give me quality over quantity any day of the week, especially when the jewels sparkle with the lustre of "One Man's Treasure."
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