NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS – LIVE: REVIEW
- Bernard Zuel
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS
Domain, Sydney, January 23
THERE WERE SO MANY moments on this night that were sublime, transcendent or just plain marvellous and there was a section of the show which did almost everything you’d want with almost nothing in the way of tools. Connection and collaboration between on-stage and off-stage was instinctive as well as physical, and at least one song that had borne a heavy emotional load on record now felt as if weight had been lifted from it, for us as much as Nick Cave.
With 150 minutes and 23 songs, a loosened and then discarded tie up front and three of the four backing singers in glittering silver robes up back, and at least one droll self-mocking moment (20 minutes into the show which had begun in twilight, Cave, who cliché would have it does not surface in sun or shorts, offered to chuckles from all of us, “I’m unbelievably pleased it’s starting to get dark”), it might feel churlish to find fault.
After all, Bright Horses was a ghostly splendour, like the memory of a feast spread out before us in shadows, and easily the song of the night to that point, only to be matched by Joy, an astonishing song in so many ways, from its tale of a dead son appearing at the foot of the bed declaring we’ve had enough sorrow, now is the time for joy, to the way it didn’t become joy but admitted there was room for it. Then I Need You, performed solo at the piano, followed them, all pain and need and emptiness waiting to be filled with the repetition of “just breathe, just breathe, and Carnage completed this quartet, elevating with sorrow’s weight and a sparseness of sound.
But that last point was not a coincidence. This 11-piece version of the Bad Seeds was for a good portion of the show not given the clarity of sound to do them justice. Song Of The Lake was sonically murky and bass player Colin Greenwood lost, Jubilee Street built from nothing to a barrelling locomotive careering down a mountainside but its individual elements disappeared, and even Long Dark Night, whose simplicity of arrangement gave welcome space to piano and Warren Ellis’ violin to lead, showed us the vibraphone being played by Jim Sclavunos but declined to let us hear it.
Missing too was some of the power in Red Right Hand and From Her To Eternity, the latter’s devilish dervish rhythm relentless but thin even as Ellis contorted himself and Cave danced in echo. Was I the only one grumbling that this might have been better indoors?
(Incidentally, staging a Nick Cave show outdoors as night falls in a Sydney summer and not playing Release The Bats is a missed comic opportunity. Hands up who wants to die for missing that?)
Yet, so much of that could almost be forgotten and forgiven by show’s end as White Elephant closed the set with an almost incongruous violence at its core balanced by gospel redemption, as the joyful energy and crowd involvement in Weeping Song opened out the encore for Cave reclaiming the beauty of Skeleton Tree, and as Into My Arms showed again it as hymnal and tender a farewell as one could ask for.
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Nick Cave plays:
Brisbane Showgrounds, January 27
Alexandra Gardens, Melbourne, January 30-31, February 1
