Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - B-Sides and Rarities

56 tracks from this modern day Edgar Allen Poe should be in the collection of any Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds fans--it compiles a career's worth of, well, b-sides and rarities, including plenty of alternate versions ("Mercy Seat" done acoustic), covers (from Leonard Cohen, Leadbelly and Neil Young), traditional folk songs, tracks found previously only on soundracks (but where is "There is a Light" from the Batman Forever album?), and much more. Having fronted Australia's post-punks The Birthday Party from '77-'83, Nick Cave and his macabre takes on life and music have been an important part of independent music for more than 25 years. Lasting that long without a drastic change in style is difficult for any artist, but Cave always sticks to his roots, writing from his own perpetually dark world perspective, often providing extremely harrowing visual images in his songs, ranging anywhere from bloody murder to sodomy. The thick, deep bellows that Cave gives to the eclectic mix of folk, post-punk, lounge, gospel, art-rock, and whatever else the Bad Seeds spit out recall Tom Waits, the aforementioned Cohen, Dylan, the Beatnik generation, early goth, the blues of Robert Johnson, the Western Frontier, and so on, with which I'm trying to say that Cave is an artist with a catalog spanning decades before he penned his first song. Obviously, a B-Sides and Rarities collection is always a definite purchase for hardcore fans, whether or not said fans have spent days upon days scouring the Internet in search of these hard-to-find songs, but beyond that, there are much better introductions to the music of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. This one's not essential, but it sure as hell doesn't hurt to have it. [www.mute.com]