Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds will begin a short run of dates in support of Nocturama on June 16th. The seven-date tour will visit only five cities, Cave's concession to the difficulty in breaking his literate, Gothic-tinged, post-punk songs to a North American market.

"We sort of gave up on the States," Cave says. "After the Lollapalooza tour, the ill-fated Lollapalooza tour, we decided we didn't need to do that again. But at some point we just said, 'Fuck it.' We've had a good couple of years, and things have changed, so we try to play regularly. And I really enjoy the concerts."

From the brooding opener, "Wonderful Life," to the fifteen-minute closing rant "Babe, I'm on Fire," Nocturama finds Cave in a form both focused and ambitious. He's also in the middle of a prolific jag. After filling the room with corpses on his 1996 album of murder ballads (appropriately titled Murder Ballads), Cave has released an album every other year. It's a pace he hopes to hasten, with yet another album loosely projected for early 2004 and one per year after that, if all goes according to plan. "That's the idea," he says. "To cut down the amount of touring, press, all that stuff and move the whole thing quicker. Because I just have to write thirteen fucking songs a year. That's a song a month. It's not a helluva lot of work."

"Wonderful Life," has a beautiful, spacious sound. It does a nice job setting up the rest of the album.

The thing I like particularly about that song is how free it is. It's reasonably long, but it allows itself to unfold slowly with long instrumental passages. That's the way it was recorded. We ran through the songs very quickly and recorded in a week. There was very much a jamming feeling about some of the stuff. Did your previous albums get recorded so quickly?

No, not really. I think there was more of an attempt made with the writing of this record to not burden it with lyrics, to keep the lyrics more simple and open-ended. Perhaps less dramatic and less storylike.

Having gotten Murder Ballads out of your system seems to have been a turning point for you. The music and lyrics have grown more efficient, especially on this record.

I think it was necessary to strip it all back to the bones and work out what was necessary to serve the song properly. You can always make things bigger. I was always struck by people like Neil Young, where a lot of it is actually down to its bare bones. And the melodies, even though he doesn't always play them, you can hear them. He sings around them. But [1997's] The Boatman's Call was a leap of confidence in the sense that we had to think that the songs could exist as they were written and that they didn't need to be overdubbed on and that kind of stuff. And I think that has carried on, especially on this record. We've just become more confident with our music over the years to say, "OK, that's it. Stand back from it. Let it go."

The benefit of two decades of seasoning. Does it ever surprise you that you've been doing this twenty years?

It's been a while [laughs]. Well, some of the records were extremely difficult to make over the years, for a variety of reasons. The last three or so, all the songs have been written before we went into the studio. Rather than, you know, two songs and ten grams of speed and hoping something will come out of it.

The biblical touchstones seem more infused in the lyrics this time out.

I think that religion has been absorbed in my life. It's become a part of it, rather than in the past, when I felt some sort of need to trumpet it from the rooftops. It's just sort of seeped in, which I like. It's there, even if I'm not writing about it.

There are a lot of water references in this set of songs. Were you in a particularly seafaring state of mind?

My office in London is on a boat, so there you go [laughs]. But the water stuff has more to do with memory, and that probably has more to with being a country boy in Australia. Growing up by the river. All the big things happened to be down by the river. I love water. I love swimming.

Do you have any favorite early musical memories?

I wouldn't call this a favorite, but my father's one nod to contemporary music was that he was a Neil Diamond fan. And he thought the rest of modern music was a load of shit. And I did have to sit with him and watch an entire Neil Diamond concert. There was an interview with Neil Diamond and he talked about how he always had a rose with him before he went on, so he could look at the rose and realize he wasn't completely perfect. That kind of put me off of him for awhile.

How did you like Johnny Cash's cover of "The Mercy Seat"? Were you flattered?

Very flattered. And I sang with him on his new record. The Hank Williams song, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." I was in L.A. doing some shows and Rick Ruben called up and said, "You wanna come down and sing with Johnny Cash?" "Yeah, OK . . . I'll try and make the time." He's amazing. There's an encyclopedia of old songs in his head.

There's plenty of death in your back catalog, though less so post-Murder Ballads. Have you found your thoughts on that have changed as you've grown older?

I'm not so sure. Death, I've usually treated kind of comically in my songs. I never had that much interest in what happens after death. The desire to stay buoyant in life, that seems to be struggle enough for me. Despite what people think, I've never been the kind of person who burnt candles and summoned in the dark forces and that kind of shit. It's always been an attempt to move away from them, though not always successfully.

You once said you only write about your obsessions. Have you found that's changed over the years?

Not really, actually. I think my kind of sensitivity to the world developed in some way in my late teens and never really changed much at all. I have no interest in staying up with what's current or fashionable. I'm not a chameleon. There's not this frantic, neurotic attempt to stay ahead of things.

So is this the best job you've ever had?

I love it. Well, to say I "love writing songs" is not the right word. I love having written songs. I find the writing very difficult. But it's better than working in the factories that I've done or washing dishes that I've done. I used to work in the zoo. That was quite odd. I had to pick up paper and litter and stuff.

Did you have a favorite zoo creature?

I loved the penguins. Still do. They're my favorite animal. I can sit and watch the penguins for hours.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds tour dates:

6/16-17: San Francisco, The Warfield
6/18: Los Angeles, Hollywood, Palladium
6/21: Chicago, Chicago Theater
6/22: Toronto, Kool Haus
6/24-25: New York, Roseland Ballroom

ANDREW DANSBY
(June 12, 2003)