evastations front man Conrad Standish is a dead ringer for Nick Cave. Actually, the whole band has that tall, dark and brooding mid-1980s Melbourne look going on and the similarities don’t end there. Their slow-burning songs bear enough resemblance to Cave to have music journalists and PR hacks throwing around big nice words. Brazen Australian spinners have even compared them to the Go-Betweens, warning local journos not to remake the mistakes they made by ignoring the legendary band twenty years ago.

It’s an easy case to make. The quartet is barely known in Australia, but regularly sell out shows in Europe. Rolling Stone (Germany) awarded their self-titled debut Album of the Year in 2004, while Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) told Mojo it was the best thing she’d heard all year.

Delivered in Standish’s throaty voice, with Cave-esque imagery like ships, whores, drownings, and redemption, the songs on second album Coal bring to mind the Bad Seeds’ Murder Ballads. The subsequent move to Berlin and rapturous response to gigs organised by Blixa Bargeld around Europe sealed the deal.

To summarise: the Devastations are from Melbourne; they moved to Berlin; singer Standish has a low voice; and they write slow, moody and sad songs, with piano. Little wonder they get compared to Cave’s Bad Seeds, but although they will appeal to a similar audience, the Devastations are quite a different beast.

At the heart of their output are understated love songs. The remarkably consistent production gives priority to the beauty of the songs and hints at the underlying power/fury of their distorted guitar work. The raggedly linear squeal of New Yorker Padma Newsome’s string arrangements hints at their chaotic live shows, but for the most part the musical backing is far more sedate. Tinkling Astor Piazzolla-influenced instrumentals bring to mind Tex-Mex outfit Calexico, while cooing backing vocals conjure up the kind of sleazy intimacy trademarked by Leonard Cohen.

Midway through the album, track five to be exact, Standish drops his laconic patter and winds up sounding like Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker. Held back, like the soft patter of a brush drumstick over a cymbal on some old soft rock record. But where Cocker’s breathy restraint is tempered by irony and a sharp wit, these songs suddenly appear in soft rock territory, proper. And although Standish has said the Devastations offers a chance to play more restrained music—in contrast to the assault of his previous band Luxedo and, he says, the entire Oz Rock music industry—in this case it’s a little counter-productive, especially when you consider that live they tend to be far more dynamic.

Despite these diversions, or perhaps because of them, Coal packs a powerful punch. They have hardly revolutionised the Cave, Cocker, Cohen triumvirate, but they have created something of equal merit and, critically, showcased song writing and musicianship that will just keep getting better.