The last thing you expect to see at a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds show is a beefy man in shorts and t-shirt “broing out” on stage with Cave. It looked like he’d been traveling to Margaritaville, made a wrong turn on Jubilee Street, and decided to stick around. He awkwardly stomped about, made rowing motions, and capped off the performance by shuffling backwards, while flailing his hands towards his genitals, as if agitatedly warding off a swarm of bees. Throughout the man’s valiant display of foolishness, Cave had an amused expression, but never broke character, continuing to sing. The David Lynch buddy comedy added some levity on a night devoted to tales of murder, depression, and bereavement. By 2017’s standards, an evening such as this would be considered escapism. And no one needed the escape more than Nick Cave.
In July 2015, while Cave and his band were in the midst of working on their most recent album Skeleton Tree, his 15-year-old son Arthur died after falling from a 60-foot cliff. When they resumed sessions, Cave revised some lyrics, and the grave spectre of absence haunted the album and subsequently, the Beacon.
When the lights dimmed, the theatre became an art deco house of horrors, with shadowy murmurs and misty organ, as Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds appeared resembling debonair undertakers in their usual attire of black suits. Turning 60 in September, the tall, dark, and cadaverous Cave radiated macabre elegance, looking more like someone who’d yell “Release the Bats!!” than he did back when he was fronting The Birthday Party in the early ‘80s.
In a career that spans almost 40 years, Skeleton Tree is Cave’s masterpiece, and it made up the majority of the setlist. The only song that wasn’t performed from it was “Rings of Saturn,” which oddly enough, was played earlier that evening on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “Anthrocene” set the tone with the line, “All the things we love, we love, we love, we lose.” The Bad Seeds chanted after each verse, and with this sad incantation, Cave had the audience in the palm of his hand, like Hamlet at the graveyard peering into Yorick’s skull.
The unsettling constant whistling synth of “Jesus Alone” matched lyrics such as “You believe in God, but you get no special dispensation for this belief now/You’re an old man sitting by a fire, hear the mist rolling off the sea/You’re a distant memory in the mind of your creator, don’t you see?” “Magneto” was even more intense, with bleak piano and ghostly pedal steel guitar that evoked a new dawn rising witnessed by someone loath to rise along with it. Cave perfectly depicted the moment when grief turns to anger with the lyrics, “Oh, the urge to kill somebody was basically overwhelming/I had such hard blues down there in the supermarket queues.”
“Higgs Boson Blues” picked up the tempo, the Beacon singing along to every word, ending with Cave so close to the crowd that some of them touched his chest as he sang, “Can you feel my heartbeat? Boom, boom, boom.” Cave’s 1984 debut with The Bad Seeds, From Her to Eternity, was represented by the cabaret/punk/blues title track, which featured the audience at its most vociferous, screaming along to the chorus.
“Jubilee Street” from 2013’s Push the Sky Away became a whole other beast. The mid-tempo studio version maintains its pace until fading away at the end. When done live, at the moment it usually concludes, Cave yells, “I’m transforming, I’m vibrating, I’m glowing, I’m flying, look at me now!!!” The Bad Seeds respond accordingly, changing the tempo so abruptly, it was an exhilarating surprise. Cave ran around the stage repeating this refrain, with the band providing a powerful, melodic ass kicker of a rave-up outro that sounded not unlike Sonic Youth’s “Theresa’s Sound-World.” Cave even sprinted over to the piano, playing an eerie counter-point that could’ve been a different song altogether, but still merged flawlessly with the Bad Seeds. Essentially, Cave is Bruce Springsteen and Roy Bittan.
He stayed behind the piano for 1990’s “The Ship Song,” musically reminiscent of Springsteen’s “Racing in the Street,” but lyrically echoing “Born to Run,” with the opening verse, “Come sail your ships around me/and burn your bridges down/We make a little history, baby/every time you come around.” It’s the Classics professor version of “Just wrap your legs ‘round these velvet rims/and strap your hands ‘cross my engines.”
Only Nick Cave could begin a romantic ballad with the lyric, “I don’t believe in an interventionist God.” Once again remaining on piano, he performed 1997’s “Into My Arms.” Cave’s a man of many talents, and one of them is making lullabies for adults. How he was able to evolve from the abrasive savagery of The Birthday Party to the ambient beauty of the last two decades, is one of rock’n’roll’s most remarkable feats. What’s even more impressive is Cave’s ballads actually contain more intensity than his rockers.
The spirally, desolate 3AM drone of keyboards drove Skeleton Tree’s “I Need You,” capturing the longing of lyrics like “I’ll miss you when you’re gone away forever.” Old favorites “Red Right Hand” and “The Mercy Seat” were more aggressive live, the former adding a punkish psychedelic freak-out section towards the end, ideal for a tune which could be a James Bond theme song told from the villain’s perspective.
“Distant Sky” from Skeleton Tree had the Danish Soprano Else Torp reprise her part on the video screen above. It was yet another extraordinary poignant ballad, the vibes and keyboards conjuring up the song’s title. You could hear Cave’s voice crack when he sang, “They told us our dreams would outlive us/They told us our gods would outlive us/But they lied.”
“Skeleton Tree” has the same lonely, elegiacal hazy organ as Nick Drake’s “Northern Sky” floating through it. Just that aspect of the song alone is enough to go straight to the heart. When Cave sang, “I called out right across the sea/but the echo comes back empty,” one suspects even the hearts of stone cracked.
Cave’s version of the traditional folk song “Stagger Lee” was one of the encores, and the moment he brought the “bro” on stage. At least 40 others soon followed, and you could barely see Cave singing amongst the dancing crowd. At one point, he stood on top of the piano and sang, surrounded by people devoutly staring up at him. The image was almost biblical, bringing to mind Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
The funereal organ of “Push the Sky Away” felt like being on a carousel of mourning, and made me think of the recent suicides of Butch Trucks and Chris Cornell. Some on the stage walked back to their seats, while others stayed, huddling together, swaying back and forth chanting the lyrics. Cave went out into the crowd to perform this song dealing with depression, written a few years before his son’s death. You can only hope Cave gets as much from it as his audience. The end of “Push the Sky Away” could’ve been the mission statement for the evening; “And some people say it’s just rock’n’roll/Oh but it gets you right down to your soul/You’ve gotta just keep on pushing/Push the sky away.”
From a man who’s often written about death, words to live by.
Matt Leinwohl