BY STEPHEN M. DEUSNER

The Bad Seeds saunter onstage looking like college professors, each in a sharp suit and with a bookish air. Pianist Conway Savage looks like he just walked out of a class on comparative literature, and multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis has a mountain-man beard that only the Philosophy Department could get away with (or possibly Studio Art). Only Cave, notoriously a student of all things American gothic, nods toward rock-show fashion, with his receding hairline strategically offset by a mustache, his wide-collared shirt half-unbuttoned, and a crowd of medallions (most visibly a gold cross) around his neck. Even so, on the band's second night at the 9:30 Club in the nation's capital, they convey a sense of refinement, as if rock and roll were a gentleman's pursuit - a calling rather than a vocation. 

They pound their instruments professionally and take requests from the crowd as if to show their mastery of Cave's nearly three-decade catalog. That call leads to an unscripted performance of ‘Your Funeral, My Trial,' whose barely contained drama makes it a highlight.

The Bad Seeds roar through a hardy 17 songs culled from nearly every corner of Cave's oeuvre: Early tracks like ‘Tupelo' jostle against mid-career tracks like ‘Red Right Hand' and recent tracks from the excellent Dig Lazarus Dig!!! They handle quieter tracks like ‘Love Letter' and the tense ‘Moonland' with care, contrasting that with the viscerality of the impossibly urgent ‘Papa Won't Leave You, Henry.'

More impressive than their range, however, is their looseness. As the band changes out instruments between songs, Cave jokes with the audience. There are false starts and flubbed notes, and ‘Deanna' especially sounds like it's about to fall apart during the first two verses. But the Bad Seeds manage to work these gaffes into the show itself and even make them seem essential. When bassist Martyn Casey messes up the chorus to ‘God Is in the House,' Cave struggles to get past the line ‘Moral sneaks in the White House' (this is DC, after all), then pronounces the song ‘jinxed' and moves on to the forlorn ‘Love Letter.'

It's a rehearsed but ragtag performance, alternately blaring and hushed, intimate and profane - a dynamic reinforced by the low stage lights that create enormous menacing shadows of the band on the backdrop and stage walls. This simple effect is better than a light show. As Cave preaches to the crowd during ‘Dig Lazarus Dig' and ‘The Weeping Song,' a 30-foot-tall homunculus reasserts his protestations. Not that the by-now-sweat-soaked Cave needs any help making his points as he struts about the stage, exploding in quick bursts of movement or swiveling his hips suggestively. When he takes an aggressive stance at the lip of the stage, the crowd reaches for him desperately. During ‘Red Right Hand,' there's an actual laying on of hands. He's half Elvis, half fire-and-brimstone preacher, turning ‘Today's Lesson' and ‘The Mercy Seat' into intensely lurid sermons about lust and righteousness. By night's end, the Bad Seeds have rent most traces of their dapper appearance, bashing out the epically profane ‘Stagger Lee' with abandon and revealing the madness behind our composure.