Wild God is the latest album from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, their 18th studio recording in total. It is also the name of their current tour which began five nights ago in the northwestern German city of Oberhausen. And it equally serves as an accurate description of the current Bad Seeds’ live experience, one that has now become a ferociously intense quasi-religious happening, high on love, life, and redemption with Nick Cave cast in the role of an illusory modern-day Messiah.
Gone are the days of Cave wading knee-deep into the crowd during ‘The Weeping Song’ – though it does appear tonight as the final encore in an astonishingly long, two and a half hour, 24 song set – and the audience feeding frenzy of ‘Stagger Lee’ when scores of people customarily joined him and the band on stage.
Gone too, hopefully only temporarily, is the long-standing Bad Seeds rhythm section of Martyn Casey and Thomas Wydler due to illness. They are replaced on this tour by Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood and Swans’ drummer Larry Mullins respectively. This leaves Cave himself as the only remaining original member of the Bad Seeds, though his trusty lieutenant and chief creative collaborator Warren Ellis and percussionist Jim Sclavunos are still reassuringly present and correct.
“Hop inside my coat
Sunday morning and I’m holding your hand
Frogmarching us home to a bed made of tears
Kris Kristofferson walks by kicking a can
In a shirt he hasn’t washed for years
Hop inside my coat, hop inside my coat”
As they open with ‘Frogs’ from Wild God – one of ten songs drawn from the record, a record that provides a transcendental, euphoric backbone to this performance – we bear further witness to the apparent prescience of Nick Cave’s writing. The American singer, songwriter, actor, and political activist Kris Kristofferson had only passed away the day before. The song captures loss, grief, and salvation in one almighty fell swoop.
‘Song of the Lake’ makes its live debut here. “It could be a disaster or a very beautiful thing.” That it is the latter was never, even remotely, in doubt. ‘O Children’ – taken from the 2004 album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus is the first non-Wild God track to make an appearance tonight – and like so many of this evening’s songs its power and glory is magnified by the presence of the four superb backing singers.
Just in case anybody had never heard of him, Cave reminds us that ‘Tupelo’ is about Elvis Presley. It was also written many, many years ago in Berlin, during what was probably the most dissolute and dishevelled period of Cave’s life. The song’s unhinged ferocity reflects that time and the inherent decadence of this city.
‘Final Rescue Attempt’ strikes a note of optimism for not only Cave’s present and future but ours too. “And I will always love you,” he exclaims, his sentiments expressing that such hope and belief can finally remove us from all of this chaos and contemplation. It borders on the ecstatic.
A riotous rendition of Grinderman’s ‘Palaces of Montezuma’ is the first encore before a frankly quite incredible ‘Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry’ threatens to tear the whole place down.
Just like ‘I Need You’ earlier, with Nick Cave seated behind his piano, ‘Into My Arms’ is haunting and deeply moving. He and the Bad Seeds may well leave us emotionally exhausted with ‘The Weeping Song’ but it is ultimately an exaltation of happiness and rapturous joy, an expression of the indefatigability of the human spirit and an unquestionable desire to move on in life.
Photos: Simon Godley
