Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
Uber Arena, Berlin, September 29
“All that has dark sounds has duende” the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca once wrote, many years before Nick Cave quoted him in his 1999 essay The Secret Life Of The Love Song, which probed the extreme emotional palette of flamenco. The hispanophile Gerald Howson defined the feeling perfectly: “the state of tragedy-inspired ecstasy”. Cave argued that it was hard to find in rock music, though many had tried. Lorca suggested a reason: “Perhaps there is no money in sadness, no dollars in duende.” Perhaps…
If you spend much time on fan forums, you’ll know some of Nick Cave’s most loyal apostles are reluctant to walk down the paths with which he appears currently preoccupied. If you want to get a discussion going, open with “I still love the music, but…” then mention religion, politics, choirs or even the shape-shifting nature of the band – tonight, the Bad Seeds’ enduring rhythm section, Thomas Wydler and Martin P. Casey, are both absent through ill health (replaced by Larry Mullins and Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood respectively), leaving Jim Sclavunos and Warren Ellis as the only veterans of the 1990s.
There is also, and it barely needs stating, the personal journey Cave has been on in the past decade. Tonight’s set is dominated by the music of the quadrilogy that accompanies this phase of his life, from Skeleton Tree (chronicling the painful end of a relationship) through Ghosteen (grief) and Carnage (anger), to 2024’s Wild God (acceptance and celebration), with Idiot Prayer’s loneliness and the faith of Seven Psalms lurking in the wings. The big question is how you transfer such a singular odyssey to an arena experience, yet still offer diehards the visceral kicks they first experienced in grotty London pubs or West Berlin’s subterranean punk hangouts.
What better opener, then, than Wild God’s vast, twisting Frogs, proudly displaying its indebtedness to Tim Rose’s Morning Dew – a song featured when Rose supported Cave at the Royal Albert Hall in 1997. Next up is Wild God itself, a big production number coming early in the set when it really ought to herald the push towards the evening’s climax; yet, by following it with Song Of The Lake then The Lyre Of Orpheus’s O Children – “A song about the impossibility of protecting our children as we pursue our goals as adults” – Cave is underlining the fact he has been meddling with this divisive choir stuff for decades (tonight there are four other singers onstage, raised high above the musicians).
If the opening sweep is a conscious declaration to the world that there is a straight line between Old Nick and the man behind the Red Hand Files’ intimate confessions, Jubilee Street is a moment of communion. “This is a terrifying song with a happy ending,” he says. A pause. “I lied about the second part.” This is the moment when the audience can jump ship or accept its relationship with Cave and prepare to be plunged into the darkness to come. “I’m transforming,” he warns us, not lying this time. “I’m vibrating. LOOK AT ME NOW!”
And as we look, From Her To Eternity, Tupelo (written, he reminds us, in Berlin), even The Mercy Seat – songs that predate all the Bad Seeds on-stage – become less essential. Offerings to keep satisfied those who have been beside the singer the longest, maybe, but not in keeping with the mood of recent years. This is a show that challenges your emotional vulnerability and dares you to falter; stay strong and we will get you to the other side, is the promise inherent in Conversion,
Bright Horses, Joy and, especially, I Need You, which finds Cave alone onstage and struggling to keep his own tears in check as he stabs brutally at the piano. It’s a punishing sequence, release only coming with a gorgeous Final Rescue Attempt and its “I will always love you” conclusion.
Relief, if you need it, comes with O Wow O Wow, a love song and the most transparent of multilayered confessions. “Anita Lane was a bright flame all us dark drug-addicted men would circle around,” explains Cave, as film of his late lover shows her dancing in Essaouira, Morocco, 30 years ago. But that tenderness is soon replaced by the electric surge of The Mercy Seat, Carly Paradis making her keys scream with pain as the drama builds. There is one final moment of tragedy/ecstasy in White Elephant, with the choir moving down to the crowd to reassure us that “We’re all coming home”, even if it is only “for a while”. What, you may wonder, does Cave believe comes after this redemption?
As a 130-minute show, it’s emotionally draining yet beautiful and inspiring, even if not all of it is entirely successful tonight. Joy doesn’t quite take off as it does on the album, Carnage is not particularly exciting. And the main man ought to tell us what all those horses (cinnamon, bright, king’s, and kicking down the stables) represent in his mind. But if you are asking yourself if you really need a dose of Nick Cave’s duende in 2024, the answer is there in the darkness. He’s transforming, he’s vibrating. Just look at him now.
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds’UK tour dates begin on November 2. Info at www.nickcave.com.
SETLIST:
Frogs
Wild God
O Children
Jubilee Street
From Her To Eternity
Long Dark Night
Cinnamon Horses
Tupelo
Conversion
Bright Horses
Joy
I Need You
Carnage
O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)
Final Rescue Attempt
Red Right Hand
The Mercy Seat
White Elephant
Encore 1:
Palaces Of Montezuma
Papa Won’t Leave You Henry
Encore 2:
Into My Arms
Waters Cover The Sea
The Weeping Song
Photograph by: Andrew Whitton