Seeing Nick Cave in the flesh is quite unlike any other artist that you may care to name. A rare talent, he has the ability to truly inhabit whatever song he happens to be singing, his body jerking into poses as he intones the lyrics, seemingly possessed by the spirit of the music itself. When, into this mix, you throw the unpredictable element that inevitably comes with The Bad Seeds (especially where Warren Ellis is concerned), you have high potential for combustion, as this evening so aptly proves.
Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
It’s a cold, clear night as we arrive at the newly rechristened NEC (this week, Bob, it’s the BP Pulse arena), and the year’s final super moon bathes the landscaped area surrounding the venue in crystalline light. As we find ourselves ushered into queues, there’s an aura of expectation, with people chatting quietly about previous events they’ve attended, or raising an eyebrow at the harried security staff shouting out instructions where, surely, a sign would have sufficed.
We enter to find the stage blanketed in darkness and flanked by screens simply displaying the title of the new album. Here, things are quieter still, people making their way to their seats, before a sustained cheer lets us know that the band has arrived onstage. As with most Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds shows, the band don’t show their hand all at once, easing the listener in only to reduce them to a quivering wreck further down the line. Tonight, they start things off with three songs from the new album – the sinisterly beautiful Frogs, which finds the screens emblazoned with the cheery phrase “kill me”; the album’s elegant title track; and the glorious opening song, Song Of The Lake, which finds Nick Cave reclaiming the sonic vistas briefly pinched by The Arcade Fire for Funeral.
After this lovely, but somewhat misleading start, the show heads into darker territory as O Children draws us towards Jubilee Street and, from thence, with a sense of creeping inevitability, into the sonic carnage of From Her To Eternity. With the latter providing the missing link between Spiritualized and Swans, you can feel the audience take a collective step back as the volume keeps building, the brutalist technique of repeat-and-augment used to devastating effect as Nick grinds out the lyrics through gritted teeth. A tumultuous masterpiece, the track (which comes from the 1984 album of the same name) is something of a calling card, reminding us that, while the Bad Seeds walk a lighter path these days, their visceral past is never far behind.
Another pair of tracks from the new album are aired next, Nick sat at the grand piano and singing of dreams and darkness on Long Dark Night. It paves the way for the bittersweet beauty of Cinnamon Horses, a paean to the power of love, even in the face of the direst circumstances. An album highlight, and no less magical in its live incarnation, it is an achingly wonderful piece of music, and it provides tonight’s show with its emotional core, uniting the audience around a simple, yet enduring theme.
As if unwilling to shine too bright a spotlight on his vulnerability, however, Nick performs an abrupt volte-face, relating the story of Elvis’ birth before setting his band on the road to Tupelo. A tale that echoes around the arena with biblical force, it sees the Bad Seeds at their most brutally effective, and it leaves the audience reeling. It’s followed by a stunningly expanded Conversion which, already a mesmerising gem from the new album, becomes monumental in its live incarnation. As the music builds, it finds Nick intoning “you’re beautiful” over and over again, before crying out “stop, stop, stop” brushing hands with the audience as he does so. It’s remarkable how three little words can have so much power and yet, with these simple phrases, Nick commands an audience of thousands. In consequence, the shimmering wonder of Joy is all the more effective, not least because it captures that most fleeting of emotions. A raw and bloody blues, it transmutes the most direct form of loss into something unutterably wonderful. It takes the breath away and you wonder how Nick found the courage to address his pain so directly. Yet in so doing, he brings catharsis to the arena on a scale that scarcely seems believable – Nick’s ability to make this cavernous space feel intimate bordering on the miraculous. It’s followed by a poignant solo rendition of I Need You (from Skeleton Tree) which, with its heart breaking “just breathe” coda seems to suggest that, even in our darkest moments, love will… it must… find a way.
Somewhat paradoxically, between these windows into Nick’s soul, he proves surprisingly chipper, joking with the audience and his band, leavening the atmosphere just as things seem at their bleakest. Undoubtedly, part of Nick’s onstage liveliness is down to the eccentric presence of Warren Ellis, who is incapable of staying still, even during the calmest moments, his legs shooting out as he taps away at his battered keyboard. This is clearly seen during a wonderful take on Carnage (from the Nick Cave / Warren Ellis album of the same name), which gains new life with the Bad Seeds on board. It leaves just one last piece from the new album, Final Rescue Attempt, to conclude this calmly moving portion of the show.
Wrapping up the main set, we get a closing trio of songs that manages to take the breath away even with the quality of what has preceded it – the evergreen darkness of Red Right Hand played with brio by the band and received by an ecstatic audience; a glorious Mercy Seat; and, at last, a brilliantly deranged White Elephant (another track from Carnage), complete with synth percussion and a committed performance form the Bad Seeds. It’s a bold finale to an astonishing set and the applause is both spontaneous and prolonged, continuing right up to the point the band return for a slightly truncated encore (“they charge, like, £5,000 a minute if you run over – I mean, if you want to pass a hat around…” Nick quips).
The encore is no less revelatory than the main body of the set, with the band clearly feeding off the energy of the crowd. First up is a rambunctious Papa Won’t Leave You Henry, which positively explodes from the stage. Then, after briefly stopping to sign an insistent fan’s book, Nick and his band tear into an epic take on The Weeping Song, complete with frantic clapping. It’s a joyous finale that leaves only a quiet Into My Arms, played solo (if an entire arena singing along can be called solo), to bring this most emotionally charged of nights to a close.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have never been afraid to look into the heart of darkness but, like all great blues musicians, their skill is to draw strength from their experiences, channelling life and light from the hardest of life’s lessons. Wild God is not an easy album, nor would you expect it to be, but seeing it on stage helps you to fully understand the hope that surges through this most recent set of songs. An amazing performance from one of contemporary music’s most unique artists, it’s hard to imagine anyone leaving tonight’s performance not feeling strangely elated by what they’ve just witnessed.
