Nick Cave twice in the Ziggo Dome: the world is still full of wonders, although nowadays little surprises when it comes to the sometimes very revered singer. But no matter how big the hall, and no matter how kitschy the choice for a gospel choir may be according to some: on the first evening he still gets the audience involved. Without emotional fragility, this time.
Photography Daniël de Borger
While Ajax thrashes a Turkish team in the Johan Cruijff Arena, the first Dutch show of the current Wild God Tour is on the program in the Ziggo Dome next to the stadium. And as it goes with such shows, even with the Bad Seeds: such a kick-off is still full of awkwardness, and tonight even full of charming little mistakes that you wouldn’t expect at all from a stage animal like Cave.
Nick Cave is normally the foreman of a well-oiled machine, but now he is suddenly speechless Red Right Hand has already started. He took off like a man possessed towards the gangway in front of the first row and… he can’t remember the lyrics. “Fuck, I haven’t had one in a long time Peaky Blinders watched more.’
To then take power back into their hands and – probably thanks to those three hidden screens with texts – still deliver a flaming version. Tight suit. Possessed. The four-piece gospel choir captivating in its madness. Dancing the devil’s dance with the increasingly crooked Warren Ellis, who pounds on his violin and repeatedly acts as if he wants to smash it to pieces.
So this is it, the full-strength tour that Cave envisioned when corona threw a spanner in the works. He was forced to take a different turn, made more music with Ellis, they even went on tour together. The Bad Seeds, they don’t even live on the same continents, were barely served for a few years. And Cave? He processed the terrible death of his sons in text and sound and, thanks to this vulnerable attitude, he has gained more and more fans in recent years, who adore him more and more intensely.
But after records like Ghosteen in Skeleton Tree you could conclude that Cave’s musical career was now very much starting to fall apart into parts. The latest part has been very emphatically marked in recent years by the musical influence of Ellis and his soundscapes. And that approach seemed to have worked out, even if it was a duo album Carnage still beautiful. Yet: there was less and less oxygen in Cave’s music.
And then there were all the other things he took on. Visual arts. Books. Stacks of interviews about bereavement, one even heavier than the other (the major Dutch interview he gave to Volkskrant Magazine was difficult to make sense of). But it was Cave himself who decided that things had to be done differently. So the band is back on stage this tour, and they have more to do. Also striking: Cave has clearly decided to stay away from too much emotion between songs.
For a moment you can hear a pin drop, when Cave tells us early in the show where it was really dragging O Children is about. So about his children, and how he found it difficult to protect them when he wrote it twenty years ago. That cuts in. But he doesn’t dig deeper. Online he writes emotional answers to emotional questions on The Red Hand Files, but on evening one of two in the Ziggo Dome he remains on the surface for a long time. “We have to concentrate,” he even says at some point in the show, and it shows: the number of sloppy things quickly becomes uncountable, although the general public will not have noticed it.
Cave doesn’t let it get to him. He jokes that you are not allowed to congratulate him on his 67th birthday. “Having a birthday at my age isn’t fun anymore.” To a fan who tries to give him a frog at least five times: “I’ll take it, but I can’t sing a whole show with a fucking frog.” No, this show is not a church service. And that is noticeable in the hall, where this show may be perceived as somewhat ordinary by some who were there the previous, eventful time in the Ziggo Dome. There is beer, cheering, chatting. There is a bit of a festival atmosphere. And is there really someone watching Ajax on their phone?
But of course, a Nick Cave show is anything but ordinary. And we don’t necessarily have to hear anointing words to be overwhelmed. Cave’s worship takes on exaggerated features and he seems to wallow in it quite nicely, but then there’s suddenly a song like Tupelowith Cave shouting furiously, playing the front rows as he always does. Cave is still there! And pets, there it is From Her To Eternityalso a song like a primal scream. Hard, fierce, merciless. So that side of Cave is not definitively snowed under.
The best news is that his new record Wild God seemed at most a middle class in his beautiful oeuvre, but on stage there appear to be a few treasures. The ballad Long Dark Night goes through the marrow and bone. O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is) is dedicated to Cave’s late original bandmate Anita Lane. And Final Rescue Attempt also gives goosebumps, especially thanks to a few beautiful lines. “After that, nothing ever really hurt again,” Cave sings. It didn’t seem like a difficult evening at all, because this time Cave opted for jokes and therefore oxygen and not for loaded words. But yes, all those texts. He touches the souls of all those thousands of people with that.
Seen: September 26, 2024 in Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam
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