Live Review: Nick Cave

Even though no one in the crowd really knows what they’re going to get tonight from the show that’s simply billed as ‘Nick Cave’, there’s a palpable sense of excitement in the venue’s foyer.

The man’s name alone is enough to evoke a feverish excitement across an inter-generational cohort like few other artists can. And that excitement is doubled when what is essentially a stripped-down version of The Bad Seeds (Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, Thomas Wydler and Barry Adamson) take their positions on stage.

Whoever thought these shows were just going to be Cave solo on a piano has gotten it wrong, but nobody seems the least bit concerned. Especially when Cave walks jauntily across the stage – as cocksure as Mick Jagger but without all the frivolity and cliché – to pick up the microphone and snarl at a poor soul in the front row still trying to find their seat, “You’re fucking late.”

Pic by Stephen Booth.

That’s all the man says before striking up the band and getting into We Real Cool from 2012’s Push The Sky Away album. Cave stands on the front of the stage, hunched over and stiff, moving like Mickey Rourke in Barfly, as he croons the ode to coolness. Despite so many years of playing music, Cave’s performance still feels electrifying. He has the je ne sais quoi to capture the attention of every eye in the room all the while seeming like he’d probably rather just be alone. It’s powerful stuff, and tonight Nick Cave is delivering it in a powerful way.

Like the last time The Bad Seeds were in town – and we knew they were coming to town – tonight’s show focuses around the material from the latest album. Higgs Boson Blues, Jubilee Street, We No Who U R and Water’s Edge all get a look in and sound fantastic. There are also a few cuts that fans aren’t expecting – I Let Love In and a restrained version of From Her To Eternity that seems to be yearning to free itself from its shackles and cut loose amid a sea of feedback and anger – and these come across as gems for some of the long-term fans in the crowd.

When the encore starts up, there’s scarcely a couple in the venue who doesn’t have a quick canoodle when Cave strikes up Into My Arms, but then the mood quickly dissipates as Cave strikes up Jack The Ripper and tells the drummer to “make it sleazy”. Though The Lyre Of Orpheus closes out the set, it’s the two songs that precede it that perfectly sum up Cave’s duality as a performer: the romantic and the psychopath. And after 40-odd years we as an audience are still captivated by trying to understand the performer’s two sides.