Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Go God Wild in Boston
The Aussie icon holds court at Agganis Arena
You heard it here first: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds are the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs!
Ok, I’m joking, sort of, but let me explain: Throughout the course of their oft-cathartic two-hour, 50-minute concert at Boston’s Agganis Arena on April 15, Cave must have interjected, yelped or exhorted “Yeah yeah yeah!” 40 or 50 times. Maybe to suggest that as dramatic, bloody, sad, anguished and majestic as this music was, it was, also, you know, rock ‘n’ roll. Not classic let-the-good-times-roll, rock ‘n’ roll but adjacent to it, just shaded in darker hues and given much more dramatic heft.
It was the start of an 18-date U.S. tour, supporting (if tours support albums any more) one of last year’s best albums, Wild God. Twenty-two songs, including nine of Wild God’s 10. The concert began with three new ones and when Cave introduced the fourth, “O Children,” he said it was “a song I wrote a very long time ago.” That got a very nice round of enthusiastic applause, to which Cave quipped that that “was not encouraging. ‘Yes — a fucking old song.’” You know old meaning better, more familiar. No worries, though. Old and new meshed perfectly.
There was one surprise, a dusting off of “Skeleton Tree” as part of an encore. “We’ve never played it before,” Cave said. “If it doesn’t work, keep it between us as a special fucked-up gift to Boston. Nobody film this!” (Actually, Cave and the Bad Seeds played it last in 2017.)
AUDIO: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Skeleton Tree”
It worked. Yet another, beautiful, sad gem.
There’s no one quite like Cave, the lanky Aussie who first came to our shores as the possessed leader of a harsh, angry and angst-filled band, the Birthday Party back in the early ‘80s. I saw ‘em once. At the time, one critic termed them “the most violent band in the world.” I would offer no disagreement.
When I talked to Cave in 1989, he described the music he had made with the Birthday Party — named after Harold Pinter’s menacing play — as “quite frightening, like a car accident, some terrible event that people were drawn towards and they could look on and cross themselves and look away. We wanted to be completely, irresponsibly violent towards the audience.” As to the music with the Bad Seeds: “More in the tradition of the music I actually listen to. More melodic with a melancholic feel.” (He has since said that he would never resurrect Birthday Party material in a Bad Seeds set; he was a different, angrier man back then. It wouldn’t feel right.)
And though melodic and melancholy are terms that are very much on the money – it’s their sweet spot – the music is more complex and varied than that description. Alongside the physicality of his performance, the 67-year-old Cave is a master storyteller. One song may or may not connect to another, you may not follow every bit of the story, but he’s hurling a myriad of ideas, images and scenarios at you. Take away what you wish or what you can. It’s a whirlwind.
At the Agganis, Cave & the Bad Seeds created a sound that was both dense and piercing, furious and measured. Two hours and 40 minutes of it, staring with “Frogs” and “Wild God.” The latter – with imagery of a sick, dying, crying god who’s “moving through the flames of anarchy … and the winds of tyranny” – set the stage perfectly for what was to come, a show that was both draining and emotionally transcendent.
As a frontman and lead singer, imagine some holy mutation of Elvis, Leonard Cohen and Iggy Pop. He conjured up Elvis grandly in “Tupelo,” noting both the King and his stillborn twin, and marrying that birth/non-birth to a sorrowful tale about a devastating 1927 flood. And, although Cave is very much a stage-prowling cheetah, he’s a pianist, too, and he bounced between the black grand piano near center stage, patrolling the front of that stage, extending his free hand to the front rows, the people on the floor pressing as close to the stage as possible. He’s not slapping hands, really; he’s reaching out and touching. Warmly, intimately. There’s something innately spiritual about Cave and his music – non-traditionally spiritual, mind you – and that carries over to the connection he makes with those most ardent fans. It’s a physical manifestation of the bonding we all yearn for at a rock concert.
And the Bad Seeds – the veteran quintet plus four backup gospel singers (three Black women, one man on this tour) – create something that hovers around, to quote an old John Martyn album title, grace and danger. Cave’s visual counterpart is his longtime writing partner in and out of the Bad Seeds, the long gray-bearded and wild-haired Warren Ellis, who primarily was at the synth, mostly seated, but animated as a standup violinist, taking vicious slashes with the bow.
Cave projected this all-consuming intensity. “Jubilee Street” began at mid-tempo and ended in a mad, ecstatic rush. In “White Elephant,” For he sang, fiercely, “I’ll shoot you in the fucking face if I see you coming!” “Red Right Hand” is Cave’s signature vengeance and retribution song and listening to it this time around made me think: “Damn, Nick’s listened to Screaming Lord Sutch’s “Hands of Jack the Ripper.” (YouTube it, kids.) Dark and tangled themes, songs of sin and punishment.
VIDEO: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “The Mercy Seat”
Speaking of … The climax of the pre-encore show was “The Mercy Seat.” It kind of always is, and best I can tell, it’s been in every Cave & the Bad Seeds concert since it came out in 1988 on the Tender Prey LP. It’s Cave as the condemned man facing execution. The tempo accelerates and the man in the electric chair tells his tale, circling around to: “And the mercy seat is waiting/And I think my head is burning/And in a way I’m yearning/To be done with all this measuring of truth/An eye for an eye/A tooth for a tooth/And anyway I told the truth/And I’m not afraid to die.” Is he a killer? A liar? A victim? Cave loves ambiguity so the answer is really up to you. (I think he’s a liar and a killer.)
The projected video – large screens stage left and right and a horizontal one behind the band – was terrific. Cave was most often in black and white (apropos) and the director captured the facial expressions and gestures we couldn’t quite spy from the lower loge.
And as loud and ferocious as the set was, one of the most stirring songs was the gentle piano ballad “I Need You.” Although the person Cave is singing about is a woman (“in your red dress, hair hanging down”) it was written after Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died in a fall from a cliff in 2015. The final lines of the song were heart-wrenching. The lights slowly dimmed on Cave at the piano with him whisper-singing “Just breathe … just breathe … just breathe.”
As to the opener, well that was supposed to be St. Vincent. Before the show, though, an explainer on the video screen: “Due to illness, St. Vincent must regretfully withdraw from tonight’s performance. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds will go on as previously scheduled.” (They actually went on 15 minutes earlier than slated.)
Before the third number, “Song of the Lake,” Cave said, “Annie got sick so you’re stuck with us.” That was it. It might be noted that the following night Annie (Clark, aka St. Vincent) did play The Late Show with Stephen Colbert as scheduled and sang “Violent Times.” Looked and sounded pretty darn good, too. She rallied, I guess.
On her Facebook page she posted, “Doing better, so sorry to have missed you last night” with a heart. Can’t say it wasn’t a bummer not to have St. Vincent do her scheduled 45 minutes of twisty genre slashing prog-rock that would have been very sympatico with the headliner.
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I’m only somewhat familiar with Cave’s stuff. I kind of like what I’ve heard.
His stage persona intrigues me. The pics here… If they were posted with an article about Neil Diamond I’d believe they were him.