Look at him now: Nick Cave‘s transforming. He’s vibrating. He’s glowing. He’s flying. Look at him now.
At Thursday night’s Bad Seeds concert at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, Cave proved to a U.S. audience what Europe has known for decades: that he — rock’s gothic poet laureate, master of emotional intimacy, and, as a side hustle, introspective advice columnist — is indeed an arena rocker. He’s attempted that feat in the States before, staging a brilliant and occasionally heartrending concert at the same venue in 2018 while promoting his excellent open wound of an album, Skeleton Tree, but something about Thursday’s concert felt different: a sense of joy.
Physically, this was the same Nick Cave as seven years ago — lanky, spry, dressed like he just survived a boozy business brunch — but in some ways, the 67-year-old seemed more youthful than previously, doing jumping jacks, striking Jagger-like cruciforms, and even stage diving while a lucky audience member served, arm outstretched, as his mic stand for a few seconds. Older songs, like “Red Right Hand,” felt almost funky with a loungey new arrangement (and an audience sing-along coda) and new ones, like “Song of the Lake,” with its many digressions (“And all the king’s horses and/Oh, never mind, never mind“) felt almost playful. On a molecular level, Cave seemed renewed.
Of course, a lot has changed for the artist in seven years. At the time, he was promoting (if that’s even the right word) Skeleton Tree, an album completed in the wake of incalculable loss. The fact that he was touring at all seemed like an emotional feat, but at the time you could see how a sense of community — with his backing band, the Bad Seeds, and with the oceanic waves of fans in the front row reaching out to touch the hem of his Gucci suit — aided his healing. And in concert, Skeleton Tree songs like “Girl in Amber” and “Rings of Saturn,” felt revelatory; the audience seemed to save them from loneliness. (Watch the concert film Distant Sky, filmed in Copenhagen on that tour, to see for yourself.)
The next Bad Seeds album, Ghosteen, was even sadder (and better), as Cave dealt with his grief through art therapy, and a one-off LP, Carnage, with his (red) right-hand man, the Gandalf-bearded Warren Ellis, felt even more insular. After pandemic lockdowns lifted, he returned to New York for intimate theater shows with Ellis and solo, with Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood, that moved audiences to tears. He also spent much of the intervening years answering fans’ and newcomers’ letters about grief and loss via his AMA-style Red Hand Files newsletter and ruminated on his healing in a conversational book, Faith, Hope, and Carnage, with journalist Seán O’Hagan.
All of this has led to Wild God, the Bad Seeds album he released last year, which marked a tonal shift for the artist. Bob Dylan* noticed this in November when he caught the Bad Seeds’ arena show in Paris. “I was really struck by that song Joy where he sings, ‘We’ve all had too much sorrow, now it the time for joy,’” he wrote on social media, referring, of course, to Wild God’s New Agey blues jaunt, “Joy.” “I was thinking to myself, ‘Yeah, that’s about right.’” But it’s the fact that Cave delivered on that emotion both in Paris and Brooklyn, with help from large-scale projections of lyrics and a supersized Bad Seeds lineup, that’s remarkable.
In fact, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds shared their joy for two-and-a-half hours on Thursday night, performing nearly two dozen songs. They kicked things off with the Jimmy Webb–inspired Wild God song “Frogs,” which the Bad Seeds built with mesmeric synths and the ooh’s and ah’s of four gospel singers. The tune’s revelatory pleas for divine understanding (“The children in the heavens/Jumping for joy, jumping for love”) set up the rest of the concert, which proved at times soul-stirring, captivating, and, well, fun and even funny.
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Cave has always been a master of crowd work, and performing in front of more than 10,000 concertgoers didn’t stop him from talking to the front row, making a running joke out of one fan correcting him for addressing “Brooklyn” when, in the fan’s opinion, it’s “New York” (“Brooklyn” got a bigger cheer) and for preacherfying about the deific qualities of Elvis Presley before “Tupelo.” Cave joked that here he was, an Australian talking about Elvis, but he still declared Presley was the greatest thing “Americar” (note Aussie accent) ever produced. He made “yeah, yeah, yeah” a call-and-response refrain over many songs and conducted a chorus of fans, singing the organ part to “Red Right Hand,” even as his voice sounded rough.
Other highlights of the evening included a transcendent “Jubilee Street” (which he teased as “a song about a girl”), a scary and playful “From Her to Eternity” (another song “about a girl”), and a dusty, country-like rendition of “The Mercy Seat” that recalled both Johnny Cash’s excellent cover and Cave’s own Live Seeds performance decades ago. Wild God’s “Conversion” spotlighted the gospel singers beautifully, and “Final Rescue Attempt” resonated with the refrain, “And I will always love you.”
Interestingly, the most moving performance of the night was a Skeleton Tree song, “I Need You” — as Cave cried for understanding for his grief, the arena remained eerily quiet, hanging on his every word. Cave fans are notable for their rambunctiousness (one man in Section 7, more than 100 feet from the stage, kept requesting “(I’ll Love You) Till the End of the World,” an obscure song Cave recorded for a soundtrack in 1991 and has never performed live, throughout much of the concert) but none of the 10,000-plus in attendance marred the beauty of “I Need You.” It just hung there, longing.
In some ways, it seems like Cave’s audience has grown with Cave. Where in the Eighties and Nineties, the singer was a pallid goth troubadour, writing his own Southern gothic vignettes of death on his Murder Ballads album and writing lyrics inspired by William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O’Connor, he has become somehow deeper, introspective, and even more authentic to himself. He has gained more fans and retained older ones in this transition. Where once was the vulgar, now lies the Vulgate, a common relatable almost religious experience that all at Barclays seemed to feel. Older songs like “The Weeping Song” where he described grief from a distance seem almost like a lark Thursday night, when compared to songs with true ache in them, like “The Skeleton Tree.” The audience was with him every step of the way.
Truly, the concert spoke to how Cave has experienced a remarkable second act. Opener St. Vincent, a.k.a. Annie Clark, cited Cave’s 2007 song “There She Goes, My Beautiful World” as inspiration for her nom-de-rock: “And Dylan Thomas died drunk in St. Vincent’s hospital.” Recovering from an illness, Clark’s voice was husky in a way that made songs like “Broken Man,” “Reckless,” and “New York,” sound deeper, adding drama to her already shadowy set. Her performance was brilliant, and she was the perfect complement to Cave.
As a whole, the gig showed Cave’s tremendous artistic range**. A lot has changed for him on a personal level in recent years but so has everything around him: There were no Bad Seeds members from any of his 1980s lineups onstage, other than Cave himself. But it’s the way that he has reassessed his own work and reshaped himself that made an arena rock show work for an American audience. Though all of the changes in Cave’s life, his audience has transformed and vibrated along right along with him. Look at them (all of them) now.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds set list:
“Frogs”
“Wild God”
“Song of the Lake”
“O Children”
“Jubilee Street”
“From Her to Eternity”
“Long Dark Night”
“Cinnamon Horses”
“Tupelo”
“Conversion”
“Bright Horses”
“Joy”
“I Need You”
“Carnage”
“Final Rescue Attempt”
“Red Right Hand”
“The Mercy Seat”
“White Elephant”
Encore:
“Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry”
“The Weeping Song”
“Skeleton Tree”
“Into My Arms”
* Nick Cave’s cover of Dylan’s “Wanted Man” (via Johnny Cash’s cover) is one of his best recordings. The Bad Seeds performed it at a couple of warmup shows last year but dropped it from the set list before the Paris show Dylan was at. Just noting here that it’d be a welcome addition to the set.
** How is Cave not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? He has an incredible oeuvre, Bob Dylan likes him, Johnny Cash, Metallica, and Sharon Van Etten have all covered his songs. Seems like a perfect fit, even if he might shrug at the induction.
From Rolling Stone US
