When Nick Cave lived here in the mid-’80s, the Friedrichshain district which houses the Uber Arena was part of East Berlin. A lot has changed since then, of course; not least for Nick Cave. While a preserved stretch of the Berlin Wall opposite the Arena acts as a reminder of darker times, the tempo around here is brisk and upbeat, thriving with coffee shops, bars and boutiques. Cave himself has enjoyed similar gentrification; today, he is an artist with his own range of miniature ceramic figurines, an invitation to the Coronation and a zealous commitment to air fryers.
This is perhaps not the future the 25-year-old Cave imagined for himself back in his wild Berlin days. Yet 40 years on, the future is very much on Nick Cave’s mind: after a series of albums that explored loss and grief following the deaths of two of his sons – Arthur in 2015 and Jethro in 2022 – this year’s Wild God found Cave and The Bad Seeds seeking positive change from their experiences. It’s not quite sunny uplands ahead, but it feels like they’re reasserting their faith in the transformative capabilities of music. The words “AMAZED OF LOVE” and “AMAZED OF PAIN”, from “Frogs”, are beamed onto giant screens behind the band, which pretty much sums up where we’re at with Nick Cave in 2024.
Arguably, this isn’t an entirely new place for Cave, though it is one that he never previously visited from this direction before. A number of earlier Nick Caves have also sought alchemical change through music and while many of them are here tonight – junkyard demon, tent revival preacher, carnival barker, unrepentant Grinderman – they are in cameo roles, acting as reminders of where Cave has come from and serving to compliment the current business of being Nick Cave.
The line-up itself leans towards a more modern Bad Seeds. With Martyn Casey otherwise indisposed, Warren Ellis is now the senior player. Considering he first played with the band in 1993, for the first time since they formed there’s no active link between the band’s earliest incarnation and their present-day iteration aside from Cave himself.
In some ways, that makes the few forays into their earliest songs – “From Her To Eternity”, “Tupelo” and “The Mercy Seat” – slightly jarring, though that’s not to say unwelcome. The past, this being Berlin, is never entirely far away. At one point, Cave explains the origins of “Tupelo” in the manner of a patient schoolteacher dealing with a slightly unruly class of students – “written here in Berlin, check it out, pay attention, here we go”. Later, during “O Wow O Wow How Wonderful She Is”, footage of the late Anita Lane filmed dancing on the sea wall at Essaouira in Morocco, is transmitted onto the screens – a reminder of another of Cave’s Berlin cohorts taken too soon.
While the Bad Seeds were slightly muted on Wild God, live they are an indomitable force. Anchored around Larry Mullins and Colin Greenwood’s expressive rhythm section, they follow Cave from fierce explosions of sound to sombre passages of near ambience and on into symphonic goth space-rock. For “Long Dark Night” they are almost motionless behind Cave’s piano; for “The Mercy Seat” they erupt into full-blooded Morricone-with-choir-and-orchestra. It’s impactful stuff and underscores that there are very few bands who can deliver musical and emotional power at this level.
A homeward stretch that includes a boisterous “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry”, a cathartic “Into Your Arms”, a joyous “As The Waters Cover The Sea” and a rousing “The Weeping Song” represents all Nick Caves. As he sang earlier, at the end of “I Need You” as the lights dropped, “Just breathe…“
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
O Wow O Wow How Wonderful She Is
Final Rescue Attempt
Red Right Hand
The Mercy Seat
White Elephant
Encore 1
Palaces Of Montezuma
Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry
Encore 2
Into My Arms
As The Waters Cover The Sea
The Weeping Song
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ UK tour dates begin on November 2, visit www.nickcave.com for tickets