Bring Your Spirit Down

I woke up yesterday morning with memories of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds in concert from the night before flashing through my sleepy mind. Then, straight away, I remembered the American election and reached for my phone and tapped the screen. A quick search and I said out loud, 'oh fuck', into the darkness. Trump was closing in on the required number of electoral college votes and was already streets ahead in the popular vote. Oh fuck.  It took the shine off my Nick Cave gig afterglow a little. 

I've been waiting for this gig since buying the tickets what seems like a year ago. The album Wild God has been close to the top of my listening since its release and I've been diving in and revisiting parts of Nick's back catalogue over the last few months. The venue- the AO Arena in Manchester- is a big metal barn and we had seats not standing tickets. I'd vastly have preferred to be standing but missed out on those tickets and navigating three middle aged men down to the front, carrying (vastly overpriced) drinks and going over the barrier seemed like a task too far. So seated we were. Nick came at 8.30pm, a six piece Bad Seeds with a four piece gospel choir behind them and opened as he and they meant to go on- full throttle, high energy, fully committed. The first song, Frogs, is one of the highpoints of Wild God, a massive sounding meditation on walking home in the rain on a Sunday morning, Cain and Abel, the abundance of life in the natural world with a Kris Kristofferson cameo, set to uplifting, swelling, awe inspiring music. Live it sounds even bigger. They follow it with the album's title track, Wild God, which is similarly massive, faster live than on disc, the rhythm section (Colin Greenwood from Radiohead on bass, Jim Sclavunos on a huge array of percussion and Larry Mullins on drums) filling the sound out enormously. There's a moment in Wild God where everyone pauses, before Nick and the choir launch in with the line, 'Bring your sprit down'. The cavernous space above us, heating ducts, air con and metal roof supports, are suddenly filled with this gigantic sound, the Bad Seeds, the choir and Nick all bringing their spirit down and pushing it out and up again. Two songs in and I'm almost overwhelmed. 

From there on there's nearly two and a half hours of music from the full spectrum of the Bad Seeds back catalogue. At most arena shows there's a chasm between band and audience, a pit with barriers to prevent anyone from getting too close. Nick doesn't do this- he welcomes the front rows of the standing section into the performance, prowling, dancing and running on a strip of stage bordering the barrier, leaning into the crowd, clasping people's hands, receiving notes from them, putting his microphone into someone's hand and then falling into a group of outstretched arms. On some songs he retreats to the piano but the front of the stage at the barrier is where he wants to be, taking part in what becomes part gig and part act of communion. It's a funny thing, this ex- punk rocker, ex- heroin addict, ex- nihilist, becoming such a people person, such beloved figure to so many- connections have been made that cross generations and he relishes it, the performance, the transference of energy, the to and fro. At one point he tells us/ one man in the front row, how the chorus of the next song goes and how to join in as if he's speaking to just one person. After the fervent applause dies down after some songs, there's absolute silence in the arena, a hush as everyone waits to see what happens next. 'I love you Nick', someone shouts out. 'I love you too', he replies. 'I love your husband as well'. 

There are emotive songs, songs that leave some of us in tears. Early on they play O Children (from 2004's Abattoir Blues/ The Lyre Of Orpheus). Nick explains it's origins, a song written after taking his young twin sons to the playground and watching them play while despairing at the state of the world and that the song is about the primal desire to protect your children. 'The song then followed me about for years', he continues, and obviously took on a newer meaning following Arthur Cave's death in 2015. Later on they play I Need You, possibly the bleakest of the songs written following Arthur's death, one that sometimes I deliberately play to put myself back into that space we were in when Isaac died, to reawaken that all consuming, physical feeling of grief, just to remind myself what it was like, just tto feel it again. I Need You has Nick and Suzie in the most banal of places- the supermarket- feeling the very worst of emotions- the death of your child- and concluding 'I need you/ Cause nothing really matters/ When the one you love is gone'. The arena is silent, Nick at the piano, reliving his grief. I'm in bits.  

But there are also life affirming songs of joy- Conversion and Joy (both from Wild God)- and there is tremendous, bone shaking rock 'n' roll, Cave jumping about like a man half his age, the man from The Birthday Party and the early Bad Seeds (who, let's be honest, wasn't expected to get this far or to venues this size). The 2024 Bad Seeds play From Her To Eternity like their lives depend on it, a song from forty years ago, amped up, 80s goth- punk energy, filthy swaggering junkyard blues. 

From Her To Eternity

They play Tupelo from 1985, Nick introducing it at length, an unholy combination of the birth of Elvis and a Biblical flood, 'Lookayonder/ Lookaynoder/ No birds do fly/ No fish do swim'. It's stunning, a swamp rock masterpiece. 

I could go on, describe every song for you and its effect, the transmission of energy between band and crowd, Warren Ellis in flight, his long straggly hair and beard trailing around him, switching from guitar to synth to violin (an instrument he plays as if it is the lead guitar). The mighty Jubilee Street with its drawn out lyrics about a girl called Bee and the thrilling gear change that takes us into the 'I'm transforming/ I'm vibrating' section. The enormous emotional whoomph of Final Rescue Attempt. The aching desolation of Long Dark Night. By the time we're reaching the business end everyone's at their fullest, the choir coming down to the front, and giving us the Bad Seeds big hitters, Red Right Hand, The Mercy Seat (which buzzes and snarls with menace), the Black Lives Matter inspired White Elephant from Carnage. Nick dedicates it to America, and there's a pregnant pause that suggests America really does some help. There is an encore which ends with the Brechtian, Weimar/ Greek tragedy of The Weeping Song, it's call and response vocals, and Nick leading the audience in the quick fire clapping section. His voice, several weeks into a tour, is superb and his performance is incredible (and avoids ever tipping into showbiz territory). 

The Weeping Song

As The Bad Seeds take their bow, the audience's love both visible and audible, Nick sits at the piano and with the band departing from the stage he sings Into My Arms, and hey, there we go again, more tears. 

In the song Joy, from Wild God, Nick describes a nocturnal visitation from a ghost who makes him 'jump up like a rabbit/ And fall down to my knees'. The ghost, 'a boy with giant sneakers and stars around his head', tells him, 'we've all had too much sorrow/ Now is the time for joy'. If this tour and the gigs are about anything it, it is exactly that, a rejection of sorrow and an embracing of joy and of living, of being alive, and the communal and transformative power of music. 

Joy

Stick that in your presidential election result.