Nick Cave is the body electric.
It’s almost enough to see him standing there, on stage, willowy, wiry, and coiled. Nick gives off the impression of caged violence, like all the greatest rock stars, and a hidden current of power ebbs and flows across the crowd as he sweeps his gaze over us. Maybe he is looking at me, but he does not see me; there is a necessary separation between the man and the knot of fans who gather at the stage to paw and prod him. I stay in my seat, watching him interact with them seems better than being one of the reachers.
They latch on, and he holds them, occasionally, before returning to whatever quiet place he’s established inside himself, where he maintains his dignity with imperious, withering pathos.
Cave is fascinating in his own elegance, even before he speaks, let alone when he begins to sing or later on, when he begins to literally move across the crowd, over top of us like a long, blue flame. He wears a formal three-piece suit for every performance, as does every member of his formidable band, The Bad Seeds, who took the stage ahead of him last night at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles last night. Fanned out across the stage, their appearance only served to build anticipation for Nick, who changed the tenor of the air in the room when he appeared, visible in shades through the heady darkness of the room.
The hushed thrum of the crowd reminds me of the spirit-filled revivals that earmarked my youth, when believers would drop to the floor at the touch of a pastor’s burning hand. Yet, Cave is far less invested than these early false prophets. Patron saint for the wounded seems a more fitting title for him; there is a ferocious intimacy to a Nick Cave show that breeds and murmurs of grief, and the tenderness required to properly field it.
Later on, during his encore, he will literally walk on top of the crowd, singing and staring out, unseeing all the while, touching the audience members like a demented messiah who would piss on the cross if he came across it. Even then, there is no puncturing his decorum, despite the 1,600+ pairs of eyes on him. He is as casual as a man naked in a bath, and just as vulnerable. Cave’s latest record, Skeleton Tree, was as gloomy and devastating as the oeuvre he has built over the last four decades, but this record in particular is a piercing cultural document of the human grieving process.
Perhaps, experiencing the devastating loss of someone so close to your heart makes the proximity of strangers who love you feel completely devoid of meaning. In 2015, Nick Cave’s son Arthur fell to his death in a tragic accident, and in late 2016 the towering, bereft concert film One More Time With Feeling let his avid, cult of a fanbase into the circle of grief just enough to experience its icy emptiness.
There is some of that vacant iciness in Cave’s performance, or, perhaps it has always been there, in the rather Victorian juxtaposition of romance and violence that inhabits his music, and I am projecting, inserting new grief into old forms. But, the soft, fleshy underbelly of the human heart has always lived in his artistic expression, and on his latest record, the listener is inclined to equate the mournfulness and grief of the lyrics with Nick’s own heart.
What isn’t immediately clear on record, though, are the wide streaks of sardonic technique that Cave employs when performing the tracks live. Is this really his pain, or is he half-joking about his pain, wondered my guest at one point during the night, an apt question for a masterful performer. I don’t think we’re supposed to know; I think the veil is part of the show.
Most of the songs he performed last night, and will probably reprise tonight in another sold out show at the Greek Theatre, are off Skeleton Tree. Several older, precious cuts also make their way into the setlist, eliciting shrieks from the sold-out crowd of elder goths who delight as much in their own dark theatrics as those of the beloved performer.
During “Girl In Amber,” a woman begins free dancing in her own little row, lost in the night, swaddled in the resignation of the refrain: “If you wanna bleed, just bleed.” Inside of this phrase is the freedom we seek — some wounds aren’t designed for healing.
The most intimate moments of the show are when Nick, with that seven-piece tempest behind him, reclaims his seat behind the baby grand and pours out a song at a distance, as he did for one of Skeleton Tree‘s standouts, “I Need You.” A few of the songs are barely above the tempo of a waltz, but many others are full of such fury they might spontaneously combust. It is rock, if you must, but with the filigree of Irish and British folk, and the lined with the devastation of a writer who knows how to move his pen in time with a heartbeat, or tracing the echo of one that’s stopped.
Sometimes Warren Ellis — who is the closest thing to Cave’s righthand man — looks like he’s going to break apart the violin he’s playing like an electric guitar, destroying it in the process, but possibly completing the song’s highest form in doing so. Other times, the band are as tender and slow with their instruments as Nick is with us, when he is above us, on top of us, touching us and moving ever forward and ever back in the dark.
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By the end of the show, the ever-growing knot of believers at the front have been invited up onto the stage while Nick moves among the seats. When he finally returns to the lip of the stage, for a moment, they all seem unsure of how to proceed. Easily, he motions them to sit, and serenades the rest of us surrounded by these worshipful, prurient fans. He is raw and ferocious, soaking through a towel with sweat in his three-piece suit, as keen and sharp after over an hour of performing as he was the moment he first took the stage.
The armies of those who love him engirth, but he remains pure current. A man made of darkness, pulsing radiance. Until the stage lights drop, and we must turn and face the onslaught of lightness outside.
