Nick Cave: Nocturama : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

On his twelfth album with the Bad Seeds, Nick Cave offers more of the gloomy torch songs and demon-exorcising mojo that have made him Australia's ranking goth poet. Sometimes Cave sounds like Leonard Cohen with a better band and a richer voice, as on the trio of pretty, slow-burning ballads that kick off the album. But Cave really gets into high gear on "Dead Man in My Bed" and the fifteen-minute closer, "Babe, I'm on Fire," both garage-rock rave-ups as only Cave could spin them. With organ, drums and violin working up a maelstrom, Cave conjures the spirit of a lost lover and howls like a possessed bluesman about a "blind referee" and an "unlucky amputee." It's the kind of spleen-drenched murkiness that inspires cults, for sure, but most people this pretentious or literary don't rock so hard or write tunes so good.

CRISTIAN HOARD
(From RS 916 – February 20, 2003)