A Living Legend of Rock Gospel Gives a Lesson in the Soul’s Most Repressed Corners (2013)

Venue: Hala Tivoli
Concert date: 25.11.2013
Attendance: 4000
Ticket price: €39

Hala Tivoli was already boiling over with cars and hesitant arrivals by seven in the evening, the crowd a mix of every age group. Slowly, after the sluggish ritual of ticket checks, we’re already seated on the stage-right side of the stands. The place isn’t exactly right for an event like this, mostly because of the awkward stage setup, whose extra PA, mixing desk and lighting desk eat up a good quarter of the floor. While the floor was filling up, the first act of the night took the stage.

Shilpa Ray played without her backing band (Her Happy Hookers); with no big or lengthy ceremony, Ray opened the night alone with her harmonium. A slightly awkward symbiosis of anxious cabaret and decidedly unusual songwriting (…teach me how to masturbate) unfortunately got lost in the buzz of the crowd. Shilpa Ray (Brooklyn, New York) was an excellent aperitif for what came later. The color of her voice at times comes close to the rasp of Mossheart (The Kills), though without the solidity of a backing band the vocals stay hollow and elusive. The combination of songwriting and atmospheric backing, at a pleasantly moderate volume overall, swung its modern decadent waltz around the hall for about 45 minutes.

With no big ceremony, Shilpa Ray left the stage and handed it over to the tech crew, who immediately got to work setting up the stage and instruments. After a short check of the gear and sound, Tivoli goes dark, and the Bad Seeds walk on, followed to thunderous applause by Nick Cave himself.

Right from the start of the show the band hit the crowd with a heavy dose of emotional saturation. Cave’s incredible stage presence and almost preacher-like steering of the crowd only kept building through We No Who U R and Red Right Hand, a dark blues exploration. The audience, in an almost gospel atmosphere, ate out of the master of rock poetry’s hand, and carried him around on their hands too. In that sense the show was extremely intimate; Cave spent most of the concert on the crowd’s hands, and also commented on the constant photo-taking from the audience. Still, the show rolled on energetically without any major hiccups, from the opening Jubille Street and Tupelo into Mermaids, The Weeping Song and the anxious From Her to Eternity. The opening mystical debauchery and Ellis’s antics (the violin bow flew all over the stage) were followed by a run of dynamically gentler songs, People Ain’t No Good, Love Letter and Into My Arms, whose verses the dreamy, spaced-out crowd helped sing in Cave’s piano guise. These more sensual, more intimate sides of Cave’s work were more than welcome. After a short breather the band pushed the night onward at full steam. Of course it wouldn’t be a Cave show without his improvisations and shenanigans; he turned Higgs Bozon Blues into a satirical rhetorical question about Cyrus’s musical integrity. Push the Sky Away, one of the latest additions to the Tivoli set, closed the official part of the night amid the crowd’s tireless cheering. After some whistling the band came back on stage and, in a final trance, added God Is in My House, Deanna and Papa Won’t Leave You Henry. At the audience’s request, they wrapped up the night with Stranger Than Kindness.

Last night’s show was one of the best of the past year; in an hour and a half the living legend of rock gospel preached out every lesson about the hidden corners of the soul and how to embrace them rather than snuff them out. With the band and Cave’s thundering voice, Tivoli drowned in a mystical, melancholic experience whose touch, smell and feel still linger.

Setlist