An hors d'oeuvre for Vancouver fans of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

The Prince of Darkness is back in town.

No, not that Prince of Darkness. I'm talking about singer-songwriter, author, screenwriter, and actor Nick Cave, who will perform with his band, the Bad Seeds, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre at 8 p.m. tonight.

The Aussie artist has popped up in the Straight many times over the years. The definitive pieces were music editor Mike Usinger's 2014 feature, "For Nick Cave, the Bad Seeds are everything", and books editor Brian Lynch's "Nick Cave creates a comedy of terrors in The Death of Bunny Munro", which was written in 2009.

Here are a few Cave quotes from those articles, which fans can think about in advance of tonight's concert:

“Something definitely happens where you step through the looking glass when you get on-stage. It’s just a different experience from real life. If that makes any sense.”

“In order to keep what I do alive—which is write songs and make records—I’ve realized over the years that I have to do other things to reenergize myself.” 

“Humour’s hugely important. It’s always been important in my songs. It was largely overlooked, but I think the humour’s become broader these days—more inclusive, shall we say. I’m actually a comic songwriter a lot of the time. I sit down in order to write a comic song. That’s not to say they aren’t serious, but often the way to get to the points I’m trying to get to is through humour.”

“Grinderman had a great effect on the Bad Seeds for a lot of reasons. Some other members of the band didn’t think so, but I thought that Grinderman had a very positive effect on things in general.”

“Once I’ve been involved with Hollywood, for example, doing a film score or writing a film script, there’s nothing I want to do more—I mean, I could run screaming back into the studio. So working on other things reenergizes my relationship with music."

"You know, the gospel of Mark reads like James Ellroy, to me. Everything’s happening super-fast."

"I don’t think I could only make records, one record after another. I think people try and do that, and that’s why they can only get through three or four records without the whole thing kind of falling apart."

"You know, I write novels or scripts or soundtracks instead of going on holiday.”

Enjoy the show! And go here if you want to see a concert pic from Cave's 2014 show at the Orpheum.