He is a Wild God: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds in concert
Hands grasping for the air, surging forward. The crowd is a sea of people cascading in waves as they reach for the figure on stage, dressed to the nines in a suit and tie. He jumps and runs, sings and dances. A microphone is thrown and retrieved while a piano is played and abandoned. Nick Cave is a spectacle, and The Bad Seeds are an entity. Together, they provide a performance that is a spiritual celebration of friendship, love and loss.
I don’t think I ever truly understood Cave’s music until I saw him live. Whilst his songs have been interwoven into my life for years through TV, film, and as part of my father’s record collection, I had never really seen the cathartic quality of his songwriting until he was standing on stage in front of me. His ballads carry an emotional transcendence unlike no other modern songwriter, delicately enhancing themes of sorrow and pain and pairing them with melancholic melodies and beautiful musicianship.
The album from which this tour gains its name, Wild God (2024), was originally conceived as an ode to joy, yet its themes are as haunted by grief as they are healing. Cave’s personal tragedies are at the forefront of this piece of work, as within the space of only seven years, two of his sons tragically lost their lives. His lyricism, therefore, bears the weight of these profound losses with a raw intensity, and songs like ‘Joy’ and ‘Cinnamon Horses’ explore these ideas directly. The crowd stood silently as he sang with glassy eyes, “Cause love asks for nothing, but love costs everything”. Earlier in the show, he introduced their 2004 single ‘O Children’ as a song “about an inability to protect our children”, upon which the entire arena held their breath in reflection. Even if we can’t directly resonate with Cave’s experience, his writing is truly profound and can offer an insight into not only his personal life but the current socio-political state of the modern world.
Whilst elements of the concert were understandably solemn, it cannot be forgotten that Cave is a performer with a stage presence like no other. It is no easy feat to hold the attention of thirteen thousand people for a gruelling two-and-a-half-hour show, guiding them through the narrative of twenty-one songs from over forty years of music. He alternated between playing the grand piano and prowling the apron of the stage that outreached into the audience, pacing up and down with an almost manic intent, grasping hands with those lucky enough to be graced by his presence. At moments, he allowed himself to be held up by those who stood below him, supported by those outreached hands, trusting strangers to carry him in moments of vulnerability. He sang with terrifying ferocity and wildness, and the people responded. Cave truly had the crowd in the palm of his hand.
With an honest self-awareness of his target demographic, Cave’s spoken interactions with his audience were surprisingly entertaining. He mocked the front row for being mainly “ageing gentlemen” and took a surprising liking to someone who was adorning a fake beard and wig, mimicking his long-term collaborator and bandmate, Warren Ellis, who promptly jumped on a chair at the realisation. The camaraderie between Cave and The Bad Seeds with the crowd was compelling. Chants like “Fucking Leeds!” and “Yeah, yeah, yeah!’ during the murderous blues song ‘Red Right Hand’, echoed around the curved walls of the First Direct Arena. His cult following listened and repeated every word with veracity.
Coinciding with this idea of respect and trust between the artist and audience, for a modern concert experience, there was a surprising lack of phone screens being waved around. A couple of weeks prior, in Kraków, Poland, Cave had singled out a fan for seemingly recording his whole gig, asking people politely to “Put your fucking phones away!”. Whilst he did jokingly allow the crowd to record him posing for photos for around thirty seconds, the videos online, ironically, sparked a worldwide debate on concert etiquette. I never got to experience shows before the invention of the mobile phone, but I can see how a device being shoved in your face for an entire gig could be distracting and almost disturbing, especially when the topics you are singing about are deeply personal, and you rely on the audiences engagement with these themes to further enhance your performance.
However, the Leeds crowd had taken notes. Whilst it could have been due to the ageing demographic of concertgoers, for much of the show, there wasn’t a phone in sight. A couple popped up here and there for videos of his most popular songs like ‘Jubilee Street’ and ‘The Mercy Seat’ before being slipped back into coats and bags. I even felt bad about using my notes app to write ideas for this piece. The atmosphere Cave and his music created through scripture-like lyricism, and the repeated blessing of grasping hands was nothing short of sacred, creating an environment where people could feel what they wanted to feel, no matter who or in what they believed.
The ‘Wild God’ tour ended with a lone figure at the piano. The audience harmonises, almost in prayer, to the lyrics of ‘Into My Arms’, arguably the most moving love song from the evening’s escapade. When the last note was played, Cave rose and drank in the roars of the crowd that begged him to stay. Once waving goodbye to the Warren look-alike, he slowly returned to the shadows from which we had seen him enter a mere three hours previously. It was as close to a spiritual experience one can get at a concert and something all fans of music should see at least once in their lifetime.
Words by Bella Wright
