On his new album, Cave often seeks that transformation or redemption in the religious, musically supported by a four-piece gospel choir. In the crazy title track ‘Wild God’ he describes a divine figure who foams over the earth, desperately looking for followers. Then there is the thundering invitation: bring your spirit down! It is only the second song in the set but Ziggo Dome is thrilling. In ‘Joy’ we find the tormented singer awake in bed, where he willingly falls to his knees when he thinks he sees something like a divine spirit at his window. He begs for mercy and joy after the pain. In ‘Conversion’ it even goes that far: ‘Touched by the spirit, touched by the flame!’ Not all of those new songs land so well, but a number of them are among the strongest moments in this set.
Those who have been following Cave since the eighties may find these new songs a bit soft, musically and lyrically. But in tonight’s set the fire and violence are always close by. In furious classics such as ‘Red Right Hand’ (with false start, ‘I haven’t watched Peaky Blinders in years!’) and ‘From Her To Eternity’ for example, but also as a black-white contrast in set closer ‘White Elephant’, a song about revenge for the oppressed in which Cave spits: ‘I’ll shoot you right in the face just for fun’, before radically turning into an announcement of heavenly paradise. It’s amazing to watch how Cave plays around his choir.
There are also songs that are just ‘small’, and at those moments you can hear a pin drop. In ‘I Need You’, for example, it’s about the pure grief that just won’t let go, not even in the queue at the supermarket. And in ‘Bright Horses’, in which the singer brings everything back to the core and stops his band to let the last simple sentences resonate: ‘Well there are some things too hard to explain. But my babies coming home now, on the 5:30 train.’ “A very beautiful song,” says Cave. “If I may be so bold as to say so myself.” He can do that, a very beautiful, layered concert in fact.
