Review: Legendary rocker delivers thrilling concert for Bay Area fans
The edge of the regular stage simply isn’t close enough to the audience for Nick Cave.
He prefers to be right at the crowd barricade — often times hanging over it, actually — touching hands, giving the microphone to fans to hold, yelling at folks who are using their phones too much, using dozens of outstretched arms to keep him from falling to the floor and, more than anything else, demanding more passion and energy both from himself and those in front of him.
It’s a glorious thing to behold, underscoring beyond all debate that Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds band are one of the greatest live acts in all of rock ‘n’ roll.
Cave and company certainly lived up to that billing on Wednesday night as they performed before a packed — and highly mesmerized — crowd at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco.
The Australian singer-songwriter-pianist took the stage with his 10-piece band — which includes four backing vocalists — right around 8:15 p.m. Nearly three hours later, the wild man from Warracknabeal was still going strong as he finished up the set with a stunningly gorgeous version of “Into My Arms” from 1997’s “The Boatman’s Call.”
Between those two points, Cave led his recklessly rambunctious outfit — which, taking its cue from violinist Warren Ellis, often comes across like a hard-charging freight train that may or may not go off the tracks — through two dozen tracks that hailed from at least 14 different albums.
A third of those cuts came from “Wild God,” the Bad Seeds’ 18th studio outing that drew yet another batch of rave reviews for the band when it was released in August of last year.
Looking dapper in his well-tailored dark suit and tie, Cave kicked off the show with three consecutive “Wild God” numbers — the brilliant “Frogs” to open followed by the title track and “Song of the Lake” — setting the tone and pace for the entire evening. The music, which is an unsettling mix of post punk, show tunes, folk, goth and art-rock vibes and sounds, was given the space to breathe and the time to fully form right before our ears.
Cave is a master at taking one thing and then building something else on the stage. He often starts small, targeting both our intellect and heart with his lyrics, and then steadily escalates matters to the point where fans find themselves in full frenzy.
The best example of this came relatively early in the night with “Jubilee Street,” which, unfortunately, was the only track chosen from 2013’s powerful “Push the Sky Away.” The song started off — at best — crawling, but slyly came to a walk, then gallop, then, without us even knowing what happened, somehow found itself in overdrive. By the time, “Jubilee Street” reached its moving crescendo — with Cave stalking the crowd barrier and repeatedly shouting, “I am transforming, I am vibrating, I am glowing, I am flying, look at me now!” — the swirl of excitement in the Bill Graham Civic was absolutely astounding.
Cave did spend some time at the long black piano, smashing the keys on up-tempo numbers and melting hearts with the ballads, but otherwise didn’t stay very long on the main stage. As always, he was all about getting close to the crowd, which was a good thing for the fans — except, of course, if you happened to be a fan who thought it was a good idea to try and shoot some video of Cave from the front rows.
“Don’t do that man,” Cave scolded, without an once of humor or patience. “I don’t want to see myself on your (executive) phone.”
Although SoCal fans might beg to differ, Cave considered Wednesday’s Bay Area show as the real finale of the band’s North American tour.
“We play a festival in LA in a couple of days,” he said, referring to the big ’80s music festival Cruel World happening on Saturday at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. “But it’s not a proper show. This is our last official show (of the tour).”
As such, I’d like to say that Cave went above and beyond — emptying the tanks, leaving it all out on the stage — on this final date of the tour. Yet, that would likely be inaccurate, since Cave seems to give it his all each and every time he takes the stage.
And I expect that will be true once again when he performs at Cruel World.
As the evening in San Francisco continued, the bond between the front man and the audience just kept on growing stronger — to the point where the former could ask a favor from the latter and then follow up with well-intended sarcasm. One such occasion, which drew a collective laugh from the audience, came when Cave asked for handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his face — and then was a bit picky about which hanky he was willing to actually use.
“I don’t know about that one,” he joked in his deadpan style. “God knows where it’s been.”
The two-hour-plus main approached the finish line with a pair of true Cave classics — the thunderous “Red Right Hand” and an especially powerful take on “The Mercy Seat” — before coming to a close with a towering “White Elephant,” from the 2021 duo effort with Warren Ellis “Carnage.”
Cave then returned to deliver another 40-minutes-plus of music during a six-song encore highlighted by “The Weeping Song,” “Skeleton Tree” and “Into My Arms,” the latter of which was performed as a solo piano number and benefited from thousands of backing vocalists in the crowd.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds setlist
1. “Frogs”
2. “Wild God
3. “Song of the Lake”
4. “O Children”
5. “Jubilee Street”
6. “From Her to Eternity”
7. “Long Dark Night”
8. “Cinnamon Horses”
9. “Tupelo”
10. “Conversion”
11. “Bright Horses”
12. “Joy”
13. “I Need You”
14. “Carnage”
15. “Final Rescue Attempt”
16. “Red Right Hand”
17. “The Mercy Seat”
18. “White Elephant”
Encore:
19. “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry”
20. “The Weeping Song”
21. “Henry Lee”
22. “Shivers”
23. “Skeleton Tree”
24. “Into My Arms”