"No More Shall We Part" is a heavy album to listen to, which is not given at first. The more the songs are heard, the more the verses are conveyed, the more the album opens up to the listener, to show a rare artistic depth.

By: Blerim Shala (published for the first time, in the Albanian Political Weekly - "Zëri", in 2001)

It is said to be a phenomenon in rock music. He has experienced all the possible anxieties of a successful and famous rock author. He was on the verge of death several times. It has often been thought that he has nothing more to say or sing, that he is exhausted, that he has died as an author... But, he has survived it all. And, last year, after a four-year break, he edited the best album of his career, "No More Shall We Part". This album was definitely in the top five in 2001.

Avoiding the gravity of the hon

Nick Cave was born in 1957, in Australia. His father, as a child, often read him fragments of Dostoyevsky's and Nabokov's books. At the end of the reading, he said with great enthusiasm: "My son, this is literature...".

Cave Juniori will be successful in combining rock and literature.

As an 18-year-old, he will start his career with the group called "Boys Next Door". From Australia, Nick Cave will go to London, then to Berlin. It was the eighties, the middle of it, when rock had U2 with the power of political messages, The Smiths with their cynicism, and dark bands like The Sisters Of Mercy and The Mission. Cave for many was discovered in Wenders' film, "Sky over Berlin", where he performs a song with his band.

The great changes in the history of Europe, at the turn of the decades, find Cave as the author of a book "And the Ass saw the Angel", as an actor in the film "Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead" and as a rock star, who edits successful albums, one after another.

In the album "Murder Ballads", the tenth in a row in his career, Polly Jean Harvey and Kylie Minogue will appear with him in songs and video clips. The collaboration with the Australian Minogue, because of her career as a pop singer, was ridiculed and despised by many, unlike PJ Harvey who is a great author.

It wasn't too late for Cave. As usual. She had a brief love affair with Harvey, which could have been fatal for both of them. PJ Harvey had decided to abandon her career and had left halfway recording the album "Is this Desire?", while Cave again tried to avoid the gravity of the hon.

Those who know him say that Cave has only one face. He does not share the opinion that he has always done what he wanted to do. That he has not made any harmful compromise where his career has dictated his creativity, but the other way around. That is, when you can't see him laughing on stage, trying to create some cheerful atmosphere at the concert. There is no fakeness in him, neither in albums nor in concerts. Now he is convinced that as a 45-year-old he should turn to his friends, who together can share the troubles of middle age.

He likes getting old

He no longer has the passion, as he says, to sing for young people. They have their own music. His son, Luke, will not read Dostoyevsky, nor will he be enthralled by his son's music. He prefers the post-punk music of Green Day.

Cave senior says now he wants to get comfortable. He got married in 1999, on Eclipse Day. He likes getting old.

On his latest album, "No More Shall We Part", there is hardly a song in which Cave is not preoccupied with love and God. With minimalist instrumental use, dominated by piano, with a measured production, with his verses making Cave one of the greatest poets of rock today (along with Dylan, Springsteen and PJ Harvey), Cave makes that his contentment with his present life should not be expressed by a decline in the quality of his songs.

"No More Shall We Part" is a heavy album to listen to, which is not given at first. At the same time, this album is not dismissive. The more the songs are heard, the more the verses are conveyed, the more the album opens up to the listener, to show a rare artistic depth of our time. And, always, in every song and every line, Cave is honest. Although now, reconciled with himself and the world, he communicates with his demons who continue to haunt him in life and in dreams.

Cave manages to avoid pathos, he's not boring, he doesn't whine.

He prays to God in his own way, he believes in love, in his own way.

He confesses to all of us who listen.

And in his songs, the nightmares and prayers of each of us take place. /Telegraph/