Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Dig!!!, Lazarus, Dig!!! 2LP

Released on the March 3, 2008, the band's fourteenth studio album, the last to feature founding member Mick Harvey, is widely regarded as one of the band's greatest works. NME described it as a "gothic, psycho-sexual apocalypse." Said Cave, "I've taken Lazarus and stuck him in New York City, in order to give the song, a hip, contemporary feel. I was also thinking about Harry Houdini who spent a lot of his life trying to debunk the spiritualists who were cashing in on the bereaved. He believed there was nothing going on beyond the grave. He was the second greatest escapologist, Harry was, Lazarus, of course, being the greatest."

What it all comes down to is that Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is a Bad Seeds record that ups the ante once again. The elegance and poetry, the drama and tension of Cave's more poetic notions are balanced by his Sade-ian humor and social criticisms and his willingness to blend flesh and spirit as two sides of the same coin. Along with this comes a band's sound that is incredibly evolved and unself-conscious. It's an album where a fire breathing, rootsy, garage rock band creates a soundtrack to modern fun house life: where the stakes are high, the odds are hopelessly stacked, and there is little left to do but laugh at its dreadful irony.