Gig played on 02/02/06

Less is more, as cliché has it, but tonight no one's counting heads because the Devil's own lounge band just rode into town. This has been billed as a solo Nick Cave show, but in fact, the former junkie and prince of darkness turned renaissance man cum seaside-dwelling dad, appears with a stripped-down Bad Seeds comprised of violinist Warren Ellis, bass player Martyn P Casey and drummer Jim Sclavunos.

Cave directs both his band and the theatre audience from his piano stool, which requires both charisma and command in spades. Not that resting is on his agenda tonight. In fact, when Cave - now sporting a Lee Van Cleef-styled moustache - first appears, he begins by prowling around the piano, lunging violently at the keys in what looks like some oddly lascivious challenge before he finally settles on the stool, pretzel-thin, black velveteen-clad legs splayed out beneath him, for an almost unrecognisable reworking of "West Country Girl".

Drama, of course, is central to any Bad Seeds performance and there's more here than Shakespeare could poke a quill at, plus enough sturm und drang to give Goethe a run for his money. There's also tender romance aplenty and flashes of the mordant, knockabout humour that is so peculiarly Australian. "Ignore them, Warren", Cave advises Ellis, after someone makes a disparaging remark about the violinist's beard and wild hair. "They're a bunch of c*nts," he sweetly insists.

Tonight's bare-bones line-up means that many familiar songs have been rearranged and are thus thrillingly revivified. In "The Ship Song" (surely one of the most beautiful contemporary love songs ever written) Cave sings across the melody, thus subtly shifting its emotional balance, while "The Mercy Seat" - usually all dark, vertiginous builds with breath-taking cutaways - is remade as a '40s, juke-joint ballad, in which Ellis crouches down on the floor to work his violin effects.

"Wonderful Life" sees his strings shredded within seconds and Casey adding a jazzy, Blue Note-styled flourish at the end, while on "Rock Of Gibraltar", Cave leaves his stool to prowl about the stage, then straps on a guitar and lets rip with a brief, glorious blast of Pixies-like noise. When he's done, he bows and theatrically kisses the air. "Red Right Hand", too, is even more awesomely strident than the fully Seeded version.

After the first encore - which include both the hilarious "Lyre Of Orpheus" and a filthy, lurching "Stagger Lee" - the call for another is graciously satisfied. After almost 20 years, Nick Cave is now hitting the peak of his extraordinary powers and his Bad Seeds fit him like a glove. Live, few bands still punch quite as powerfully as this.

by Sharon O'Connell