Nick Cave is the most darkly and not-quite-handsome thing to happen to music in a long long time. Like Mike Patton, some of his lyrics are crushingly insightful, some are painfully elementary, and others are just plain weird. But the sum of the whole is much much greater than its parts. The genius of Nick Cave lies in the scope of his entire body of work. His pathos is laid clear and mysterious across each album since Birthday Party. He wants to let you in, but he doesn’t want to talk to you. He wants you to know what’s wrong by a fleeting and subtle gesture. He wants you to want to guess.  Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are playing the Hollywood Bowl September 17th, a Wednesday, at 7pm. For you trivia fans, Nick Cave got the scar on his face from a friendly knife fight turned nearly deadly with his then-girlfriend Anita Lane.