It’s a blisteringly hot day in Brighton, a city already filling up with Pride attendees ahead of tomorrow’s parade, and we’re on our way to Preston Park for a single-day festival headed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, playing their only UK show of the year.
We arrive in time to explore the site in advance of Oklahoman rockers Flaming Lips who, quite honestly, appear to be on the form of their lives. The site, which also hosts Pride across the weekend, is very well organised, with numerous bars, food outlets, and shady spots in which people can rest between sets and escape the blazing sun. While the queues for both merch and food become frustratingly long at peak times (especially between the Flaming Lips and Nick Cave), everything is well managed and there’s easy access to drinking water and other facilities, which helps to keep the day enjoyable.
Anyone who has seen The Flaming Lips in recent years will know that the band exude joy on the live stage and today is no exception. A subtle, gently building It Overtakes Me opens the show before giant pink robots take over the stage for the multi-hued confetti explosion of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Parts 1 & 2. With Wayne gleefully firing streamers over the head of the front rows and the band crosspollinating genres at will, it’s a blissful experience that brings the crowd together.
Each moment that the Flaming Lips bring is something special. The gorgeous, laconic The Spark That Bled (from The Soft Bulletin); the taut, beat-driven glory of The Golden Path (originally conceived with The Chemical Brothers and completed here with dancing suns); and a heart-felt Every Teardrop Cried, dedicated in a moment of extreme pathos to Wayne’s late brother; they all lead to the same conclusion: that a Flaming Lips shows is about forming connections, both with the band, and with your fellow audience members. Even indie-rock classic She Don’t Use Jelly, with its whimsical nonsense lyrics manages to feel as if you’re taking part in something profound.
The band’s lovely set concludes with a trio of wildly different songs. The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song is always a blast thanks to an insistent melody and bitingly sarcastic lyrics. A ferocious cover of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs, played admirably straight, provides a brief nod to some of the darker forces currently corrupting the world and, and, in keeping with the inclusive ethos of pride, the love-fuelled Do You Realize reminds us that, more than anything else, we have to share moments with those we love while we can.
That The Flaming Lips have overcome tragedy in their lives is hardly a surprise – the band has been about for nearly fifty years – but what is a surprise is their ongoing adherence to the childlike wonder that made them so special in the first place. It makes them one of the most unique, and uniquely wonderful, acts currently treading the boards and they conclude their set leaving many in the audience wanting a good deal more.
Alas, while there is no more time, we now have an hour to prepare for the wildly anticipated arrival of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
Over the course of eighteen wildly varied Bad Seeds albums, Nick Cave has achieved a level of success largely in spite of the artistic impulses that have driven his career. The diversity of his material is reflected by the diversity of a sold-out crowd who span the gamut from mohawk-sporting punk rockers and Sonic-Youth-loving alt rockers to classic rock fans and prog geeks. If there is one element that brings all these people, together, it is the skein of raw humanity that runs through Cave’s work. Sometimes dark, sometimes deeply emotional, sometimes suffused with joy, there’s an honesty that binds both artist and crowd and, as he guides us on a remarkable 19-track tour of the band’s history, that thread of humanity is the one thing that tethers an otherwise wildly unpredictable and utterly engrossing set.
The band open hard with Get Ready For Love, the hard-rocking lead track from Abattoir Blues. It’s an explosive start and it kicks off a show that really pushes at the fringes of what is possible from a band that, at least nominally, has brushed sleeves with the mainstream. From there, we go all the way back to the start for a bristling From Her To Eternity, which brings the gruelling no-wave minimalism of Swans to an audience that is only partially prepared for such a monumental outpouring. While From Her… has long been a part of the set, less predictable is the inclusion of Train Long Suffering, a bar house blues that has a dirty, ramshackle charm.
From hereon it’s clear that nothing is off the table. Wild God and O Children swap musical might for emotional heft, both beautiful pieces, while the throbbing bass of Tupelo (another track from The Firstborn Is Dead), reminds us of the incipient threat that lies at the heart of the Bad Seeds’ appeal. A versatile band, the Bad Seeds really can do it all, finding a Leonhard Cohen-esque lyricism in the devastating beauty of Carnage and seeking an ultimate catharsis in the shimmering Joy and Rings Of Saturn. Along the way, they’ll nod to the likes of R.E.M. and Sigur Ros but truly, they never sound like anything less than themselves.
And then, with the night already proving to be astonishing, Nick Cave stuns us all by bringing Kylie out on stage. A deeply emotional moment, especially for those who grew up on Murder Ballads, you can feel the love these two artists share, and it makes for a spellbinding moment. While I’m pretty sure the sting in my eyes is down to the high levels of dust in the arena, there’s no doubting the wave of adulation that ripples across the massive crowd as they deliver a stunning duet that concludes with them holding each other close. It’s one of those “I was there” moments, and it leaves the audience stunned.
After such a moment, fragility isn’t really an option, and so Nick takes us through some of the band’s most intense big hitters. A coruscating The Mercy Seat and a blazing Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry sets the adrenaline coursing through the veins, while an extended Red Right Hand (which finds Nick jokingly offering to trade a s super-limited Bad Seeds vinyl for a Flaming Lips one) explodes into shards of flaming art-rock fury, leaving the studio version gasping in its wake.
The final three tracks are an emotional tour de force. Weeping Song feels like the ultimate blues, delivered with a mix of gritty panache and travelling carny sleight of hand; Jubilee Street slowly builds to a heady climax; before the eerie pulse of Hollywood wraps up the main portion of the set with a moment of eerie ambience and unearthly beauty.
Honestly, choosing an encore for a set packed with such riches must have seemed a challenge and yet the band. Returning to the stage to rapturous applause, they blaze through an entirely unexpected City of Refuge (from Tender Pray), giving it a gospel edge that has the entire crowd enthralled. This is followed by a sublime Wild Lovely Eyes, before the band take their leave, leaving Nick to conclude proceedings with Into My Arms, stripped to its very essence and reclothed with the massed voice of an audience who offer the very last drops of their emotional reserve to an artist who has stood alongside them for the darkest and the lightest moments of their lives.
Few artists can connect on the level that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds manage. Nick himself channels a number of roles over the course of the evening. Sometimes he’s a broken-hearted troubadour, sometimes a wild-eyed noisenik, not so far removed from Wayne Coyne, sometimes the dust-covered preacher man with the red right hand. He is all of these things and more, and there’s humour there too (not least when he stops for a moment to sign a fan’s tattoo), leavening the mood when things threaten to get too dark. But always, he remembers the audience. They are as much his muse as his wife is, and you can see the connection as he holds hands, accepts signs, and greets those who have braved the heat to stand at the very front.
You don’t go to a Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds show, you experience it. Today is something very special indeed, even transcendental, and it is the ultimate reminder of the healing, transformative power of music.
