The Boatman's Call is Nick's most sparcely populated album, and possibly, his most intimate.

Drawing from the ending of his marriage, and from the full arc of a relationship with PJ Harvey, Nick paints a sad and quiet portrait of love in the human condition.

Instrumentally, TBC explores deeper into the territory that Nick ventured into with The Good Son and Your Funeral, My Trial. Sparce songs, often utilizing only two or three instruments are the highlights of the collection.

Much of this album was completed well before it was released. Nick began working on TBC shortly after touring for Let Love In with Lollapalooza. During this time, Nick threw together a few old songs he lying around along with some covers of traditional tunes and he and the Bad Seeds produced what they considered a side project: Murder Ballads. The band expected the album to have little impact, but of course it became the biggest selling album of Nick's career. This public response caused Mute to want to hold TBC's release until after the furor around Murder Ballads had died down.

From Select Magazine (Thanks Pete Ferreira):

Q: What are the key influences on the album?

A: "I've made a list, actually, which I never do, so it's a bit of a scoop. Yeah, aren't you lucky?
Anyway... the sonnets of Louise Lab, church hymns, the music of the Estonian composer Arvo Prt, Samuel Barber's Agnus Dei, Schubert, the apocryphal gospel of Thomas, The Dirty Three, the Egyptian singer Om Kolthom, St Francis of Assisi, The Palace Brothers, Sir John Betjeman, the poetry of Rilke, Auden and Christopher Smart, the plays of Strindberg, my son and women."