Live Report: Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds at Malahide Castle

There’s something disconcerting about seeing Nick Cave during daylight hours. And yet, given Ireland’s location in the north Atlantic, it’s remarkably bright when the dark lord and his not-so-merry men take to the stage just after 8pm, ‘Get Ready For Love’ blasting from the PA. The frontman himself makes reference to the too-godly hour, laughing “Is it as weird for you as it is for me?”

Cave Version 3.0 is the most comfortable, and possibly the most dynamic, frontman in rock ‘n’ roll right now. Gone is the drug-addled punk pedlar of The Birthday Party and the sneeringly sardonic shaman of the early 2000s. Tragedy and time have changed him, leaving behind six-feet of skin, soul and sympathy.

Credit: Saoirse McAllorum

Part sooth-sayer, part truth-teller, Cave is mesmeric, owning the stage, from piano stool to pit, constantly reaching for the audience, seeking some kind of communion between himself and his people. It’s not just the presence of the four backing singers that make this feel like gospel; it’s spiritual, it’s communal, it’s symbiotic, baby, so at any given moment, it’s hard to decide who is gaining more sustenance from the experience, band or audience.

For the first night of this European festival run, it’s the same band set-up as the Wild God tour – six musicians, four backing vocalists and Cave himself - but the setlist is hugely different from those gigs. ‘From Her To Eternity’ is given an early outing, as is the seldom-heard ‘Train Long Suffering’, which he jokingly describes as “pseudo-gospel” and ‘City Of Refuge’, making it clear this is no easy greatest hits set.

Credit: Saoirse McAllorum

There are still plenty of Bad Seeds classics sprinkled throughout, spruced up in their best bib and tucker and invited to the ball. Backing singer Janet Ramus joins Cave front-of-stage for a spine-tingling ‘Henry Lee’. The Peaky Blinders effect has turned ‘Red Right Hand’ from leftfield western oddity to mainstream anthem, but the biggest surprise from Cave’s book of revelations is the monumental ‘Tupelo’. Sure the bass still throbs with elemental fury, and the biblical babbling could be lifted straight from the Old Testament, but the imagined fable of Elvis’s birth is more celebratory than straight-to-hell-ery these days, although it’s no less powerful.

‘Nobody’s Baby Now’ is sublime, Cave’s magical musical foil, Warren Ellis shredding his violin in a manner that sounds like Hendrix back in 1968. You’d think ‘Into Your Arms’ might have lost some of its power over the thousands of times he has played it, but still it has the capacity to move, the onstage camera going in for the super close-up on Cave’s craggy features, a Mount Rushmore for the broken-hearted.

Recent compositions include the haunting ‘Bright Horses’ (from Ghosteen), ‘Rings Of Saturn’ (from Skeleton Tree), and ‘Carnage’, the title track of the 2021 album from Cave and Ellis, on which he namechecks Sinéad instead of Flannery O’Connor tonight.

Credit: Saoirse McAllorum

The main set ends with the unsettling ‘Hollywood’, the darker-than-dark lyrics flashing up on the screen, which seems a weird way to finish. But any doubts are dispelled by a stunning six-song encore, which includes an edgy ‘Stranger Than Kindness’, Ellis’s mesmerising guitar on ‘Papa Won’t Leave You Henry’, a pulsating and unhinged ‘Jubilee Street’, a singalong for ‘The Weeping Song’, and a dedication to his wife in the form of ‘Wide Lovely Eyes’.

The icing on the cake is a piano-driven finale of ‘Rainy Night In Soho’, complete with full audience singalong, which he dedicates to “Shane and the Fontaines” before the band slinks from the stage to the ringing of tumultuous applause.

The Bad Seeds are arguably, pound-for-pound, the greatest live act in the world right now, and not just ‘cos they’re all skinny fuckers. Majestic.