Nick Cave Opens Tour With Opera House Tour De Force

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have opened their Australia tour at the Sydney Opera House this evening in blistering fashion.

The first time Nick Cave has played at the venue with the Bad Seeds, they opened by playing new album Push The Sky in its entirety. The record – which gave the band their first number one this week – owes a lot of its atmopshere to the recent soundtrack work of Cave and partner in crime Warren Ellis, and those soundscapes came to life with the aid of a Sydney Symphony mini-orchestra and children's choir (who really shone later in O Children).

Received rather passively by the sold-out, laregly middle aged audience, the first half of the set climaxed with one of the album's true growers, the final and title track, which Cave gave even more tension to in the live setting.

In surprisingly good spirits throughout, Cave thanked the audience – with whom he regularly bantered – before launching into From Her To Eternity. Ellis, who along with Cave was the show's main focal point, conducted the orchetsra in his own enigmatic fashion during the track. “He's always wanted to do this,” Cave quipped.

Responding to yells from the crowd, Cave confirmed they'd play Stagger Lee (“once the kids leave”) and The Ship Song early on in the second half. The former turned out to be the encore, while the latter never quite got off the ground as well as was hoped, particuarly given its ties with the venue.

There was a slight delay prior to Deanna, with Ellis' violin suffering technical issues. After a minute of troubleshooting, Cave decided to fill the gap with God Is In The House. Admitting “we haven't done this in a while” he stumbled over the lyrics a couple of times before Ellis' technical gremlins were eventually sorted and the band jumped back into Deanna.

The band seemed to still be feeling each other out at parts, although the recently returned Barry Adamson was playing as if he'd never left.

Wrapping up after two hours, the first encore of Stagger Lee was met with another standing ovation but after a 30 second delay that seemed to indicate there was more instore the house lights went up and a low hum of boos rang around the venue. It was an end that wasn't at all representative of the crowd's appreciation, even if they still need a little more time for the Push The Sky material to sink in.

Read the full review here.