Damnation once again

We ain’t down here for his money, as the man said; ain’t down here for his love. We’re here for Nick Cave’s soul, to receive these songs about love and killing straight from the horseman of the apocalypse’s mouth, to hear the word, as it were, made flesh. Or are we? A woman in front of me sings along to the dead-man-walking, soul-terror rant that is ‘The Mercy Seat’. She whips her hair round in a lascivious arc as if in the middle, or perhaps closer to the end, of some sexual act not overtly discussable in a 300-word live review in a family music paper. “And I’m not afraid to die!” she bellows, periodically.

So, we have people play-acting at being Damned/Redeemed (circle as appropriate) in the crowd, and disappointingly, similarly empty coups de theatre onstage. Mind you, it’s some of the best theatre we’ve ever witnessed. There’s Blixa Bargeld, motionless, cool-as-fuck, stony and ominous as a dolmen; there’s Warren Ellis, tall and monstrous like a thrown shadow, a nightmare in a bruise-purple suit. And there’s Old Nick himself, doomy and violent in Edwardian exorcist-black, careening about as one freshly cast out of Eden, addressing us like a fallen preacher from the teetering edge of the stage, eyes burning, the songs tumbling from his lips like psalms.

But theatre is all it is. Every moment is practised, perfect, and predictable; for all their sound and fury, they don’t even break a sweat. It makes us long, funnily enough, for something bloodier: say, the wracked ecstasies of Tindersticks, the skeletal telegrams of 16 Horsepower, the clotted bloodbaths of vintage PJ Harvey – equally theatrical performers all, if more fallibly, messily human.

And as Cave raises one hand to accept rapturous applause, we’re applauding, more than anything, their professionalism: truly, they were very good at being Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds tonight. And out we spill into the night, neither damned nor redeemed.