Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' 12th album, Nocturama, is, like its predecessors, a darkly beautiful, occasionally cantankerous collection of ruminations on life, love, and death. How it stacks up against its forerunners depends largely on whether one prefers Cave in caterwaul or croon mode.

Details

Monday and Tuesday, June 16-17

Freakwater opens at 8 p.m.

Tickets are $25-35

775-7722

The Warfield, 982 Market (at Sixth Street), S.F.

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More About

• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
• Warren Ellis
• Sonny Liston
• Chris Bailey

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Those with a soft spot for Nick's now-trademark piano ballads should find Nocturamaa comfort, with seven of its 10 tracks lurking in that realm. The sweet and simple tunes are greatly enhanced by the Bad Seeds' haunting, emotive accompaniment, Dirty Three violinist Warren Ellis in particular. Cave's lulling melodies on tracks like "He Wants You" and "Still in Love" are exquisite, and "Rock of Gibraltar" has a decent shot at becoming a goth wedding standard.

Perhaps due to the preponderance of ballads, it's the remaining three tracks that truly stand out, one way or another. "Bring It On" is a jarringly generic midtempo rock song, only marginally elevated from Wallflowers-level dreck by deft Bad Seeds fills and backup vocals from Chris Bailey of the Saints. "Dead Man in My Bed" roars with gale-force intensity, but the real humdinger is "Babe, I'm on Fire." This 15-minute, 38-verse epic features a cast of hundreds, from the "mild little Christian" to "the wild Sonny Liston." With glorious instrumental cacophony and some of Cave's most whimsical lyrics in years, the song hearkens back to the bombastic energy of his last band, the Birthday Party, and offers renewed hope that he might spend less time on the piano bench and more time serving up his inspired insanity of yore.