Too often in modern music – particularly in gangsta rap – death is used as an effect. These tunes make death seem almost romantic, tales of big guns and heroic passions. Those writers should listen to this album. Murder is rarely romantic, Cave realizes, it's messy, angry and disquieting. These ten tunes, all of which center on death or dying, focus on the desperation and dirtiness of death. Cave has an amazing ear for detail (beyond his day job as singer, Cave has become a respected novelist.)

Typically wrenching is the song "Where The Wild Roses Grow," which is a duet with (believe it or not) Australian dance-pop singer Kylie Minogue. Cave is the tortured loser, Minogue is the beautiful object of his affection, he finally gets her to take a picnic with him, but when she rejects his advances, Cave crushes her skull with a rock, explaining simply "All beauty must die." Other songs are as passionately twisted until the soothing finale of Cave, Minogue, P.J. Harvey and Shane MacGowan doing Bob Dylan's "Death Is Not The End."