Nick Cave in concert

Venue:

The Plenary, Melbourne

Date: 17/12/2014

I posted this review on KFD’s Afterworder refugee Facebook page. There are a lot of Nick fans here and this review generated a bit of interest so here it is.

Is it me or is it you Nick?
We’ve been together now for so long. Those early shows at the Club in Collingwood ,the incendiary performances fuelled on junk with Barry Adamson on bass Blixa on guitar along with Mick Harvey …..Tupelooooo! Then those hot sweaty concerts at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney .Nick’s annual Christmas tours to visit Mum. Henry’s Dream ,Let Love In, Murder Ballads. Nick stalking the stage, menacing and frenetic and if you got too close you could expect a boot swung towards you. We shared the pain of Michael Hutchence’s death when you played a sombre set the day after his death at the extravagantly Rococo State Theatre .It was with a small backing band, the first with Warren wasn’t it? I supported you when you replaced anger and smack with ballads and strings. And then on to that sublime opening line ” I don’t believe in an interventionist God”. I laughed and cheered when you incorporated figures from Greek mythology in your narrative. And choirs and flutes too. Good on you, go where your muse takes you I cheered. I cheered some more when I saw 5 Grinderman shows in four days – 2 at the metro and 3 in the Victorian alps when you curated All Tomorrow’s Parties. And those soundtracks with Warren – I’ve loved them all.
So we come to this year’s show. It was promoted as a solo gig. Fair enough, Nick is back in town for Christmas and thrown in a few gigs on the side.And this is Melbourne, home town territory, so guaranteed to sell the shows out.And so he has.
But no, it’s not a solo show. Warren is here too and Thomas and Martin and Barry too but he is on keyboards. Well Wazza is an Aussie and Bazza has family links to Melbourne so perhaps they’ve crashed the party and the others? Well an Aussie summer versus an English winter – it’s an easy decision.
So the gigs are now billed as intimate shows with a small ensemble. Unplugged possibly. Radical rearrangements a la one of Nick’s heroes Bob Dylan? The anticipation was high.
So on to the venue. The Plenary more typically used for business conferences and expos but I heard Neil Young did his best show of the tour so could be,ok. It’s a big. Place ,wide with a really high ceiling.A giant clam. The seats are comfy and the sound is superb. It’s probably a rung below stadium. Video screens could be justified but I’m glad they’re not employed. Nick opens with a quiet ballad ,love letter possibly.Possibly not,but one of the usual. Then it is into Red Right Hand and Nick is up and doing all the usual moves ,the arms outstretched ,the crucifix look ,the knees and shoulders spread, he is pacing up and down like a Bad Seeds show but it’s not. The sound of the instrumentation seems to be different. Warren is penned over in a corner seated rather than the usual dervish-like performance. The drums are set up high in a corner too bass and keyboards also.They are really spread out and it doesn’t look or feel like a band performance .I’m feeling a bit uneasy. And what is Nick doing? He is going up and down the edge of the stage. Holding hands as the devotees stretch out their arms. Holding hands? WTF? He’d have kicked those heads back in the day. Is he taking the piss? Either way it seems all about those people standing at the front and the rest of us don’t seem to be part of it. Then it’s back to Nobody’s Baby Now.A personal favourite. Nick comments that it is a fucking good song and I agree. From the Middle Period he says amusingly. He asks for requests, asks the band to count songs in from their elevated towers. This doesn’t feel like a classic professional Bad Seeds show it feels like it has been thrown together. For mine, the ballads with just Nick or Nick and minimal instrumentation are much more successful than the rock-out songs. From Her To Eternity doesn’t elicit the usual crowd participation and you can feel that Nick is not pumped for this show – I can’t tell which comes first – the enervation of the audience or the perfunctoriness of the performance.When Warren is screeching away from the confines of his pen I start harking back to the days of Blixa and Barry on bass and Mick, when we were young, when we had passion. Are we growing apart?
This was a show that should have been at the Metro but some fucker of a developer has pulled it down for a boutique hotel so here we are with energy dissipated by the breadth and height of the venue.
The end of the show comes and we all wait for the inevitable encore. An excellent version of Jack the Ripper is followed by Push the Sky. Nick sings really flat – awful. Can’t say I’ve ever heard him sing flat before. Oh and that song has one of the worst couplets ever- it jars every time I hear it. ” you know some say it’s just rock and roll , but you know it gets you deep down in your soul” . Or something like that.What is Nick Cave doing referring to “rock and roll”?Then on to the closer Jubilee Street and the lights are on.
The reviews from Sydney are excellent. The State Theatre is a great venue so perhaps it’s this quasi corporate venue. My friends loved the show but they have only seen him in Grinderman . They haven’t been in a relationship for over 30 years. Perhaps we need a break, perhaps we are taking each other for granted.Perhaps it’s over.
OOAA Here’s one
http://www.smh.com.au/…/nick-cave-review-solo-show-with-see

The audience:

covered above

It made me think..

covered above

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