Album review: Lovely Creatures by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

No mere compilation could do justice to the sweep and fever-dream fecundity of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Thus Lovely Creatures, Cave’s first ever ‘greatest hits’, is best regarded as beginner’s guide to this eternal outsider rather than a definitive survey of his near four-decade career.

That said, for the newcomer there’s lots here sure to mesmerise, from the Old Testament goth of ‘Tupelo’ and ‘The Weeping Song’ to the backwoods bacchanalia evoked by ‘Red Right Hand’ (perhaps his poppiest moment) and the wailing, stampeding ‘The Mercy Seat’.

What’s most extraordinary is the manner in which Cave, invariably accompanied by the shrieking violins of regular foil Warren Ellis, has plotted a shape-shifting life in music whilst communicating an essentially unchanged worldview. Always the awkward bystander, his lyrics at their best have the quality of true literature, with their gift for cutting observation and Biblical bombast.