Obsessed with sex, death and Elvis, Australian singer Nick Cave left his superb band, the Birthday Party, to explore the blues in a purely post-modern way: he locates its emotional core and then stretches it over music that is tribal and unyielding. He has been criticized for being verbose, and anyone with the patience to wade through the two volumes of King Ink--collections of his lyrics, stories and plays--will immediately realize brevity is not part of Cave's modus operandi.