Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / Dvorana Stožice / Slovenia
Concert date: 30.10.2017
Attendance: 10.000
Nick Cave and his backing crew of »bad seeds« were handed Slovenian citizenship ages ago, over the course of their long and prolific career. He belongs to that handful of foreign acts, the elite, you could say, who are deeply cherished and adored by the Slovenian music public. And that’s despite not coming from the former shared homeland, meaning the Balkans on the far side of the Kolpa. The man has played in Slovenia a few times, but a dozen years had passed since his last visit, so many people understandably missed Cave very, very much.
Tickets for the big Hala Tivoli melted away, as you’d expect. With demand that just refused to die down, the organizer decided to release a little under a thousand extra tickets, and the show was moved to a bigger venue, Dvorana Stožice. Still, the upper stands stayed closed. When we found ourselves on the floor a little after eight in the evening, I felt like I’d landed in Zagreb’s Arena. An enormous army of fans had come to this gig from neighboring Croatia, and they took up most of the front of the floor, where, even before Cave and his companions took the stage, you could feel a real adrenaline fever of pre-show euphoria.
And sure enough. The hall went dark and turned blue, the Bad Seeds were already standing on stage, creating the backdrop, and then Nick Cave climbed up last and ran right to the edge of the stage, where the stands and the floor erupted. In that din the high pitches dominated, now and then reminiscent of waves of hysteria. From the screaming members of the fairer sex, of course. In his own style, Nick Cave pulled the audience in at once. A statue of boundless sorrow, contrite and broken-hearted, endlessly sinking to the bottom in all his pain and longing.
A year ago Cave released his new studio album »Skeleton Tree«. The title is no surprise. In mid-2015 his fifteen-year-old son Arthur died in a tragic accident. And the tree, which in symbolism usually stands for the family, became Cave’s symbol of great mourning. »Skeleton Tree« is thus a powerful document, one of the strongest in his rich and prolific discography. The live show unfolded the same way. The album »Skeleton Tree« was the common thread, and Cave played the bulk of his material from it. As is already known in this artist’s stage folklore, Cave shook hands with fans in the front rows the whole time, at one point even climbing up into the stands, leaning on the hands of the crowd, sharing smiles, speaking words of encouragement to an audience that, as if enchanted, repeated after him the triumphant lines of Cave’s deep and piercing poetry.
Cave is of course a charisma without equal, but even so, the concert couldn’t have been experienced with full-blooded intensity if the dot on the »i« hadn’t been added by his backing band the Bad Seeds, a lineup that’s been steady for years and in which the name Waren Ellis naturally stands out! He once again stunned with his deeply felt playing, swapping a whole galaxy of instruments in his hands. He handled the programmed loops, played synthesizer, vibraphone, electric guitar, violin and piano, and several times went wild on stage, spinning into a proper shamanic dance. Especially when he was brandishing the violin and guitar. Alongside Ellis, the stage was also occupied by acoustic guitarist George Vjestica, percussionist and vibraphonist Jim Sclavunos, drummer Thomas Wydler and bassist Martin Casey.
Cave, who proved with his performance once again that few come close to him in the sincerity of voraciously delivered emotion and seething passion, is a master of incredibly intense, lived-through performance. With it he once again bared his heart, and the whole emotional tangle of pain and love that glows inside the artist, he shared with his audience without restraint. In the middle of the show he sat down at the piano and played, among other things, a few universally beloved career peaks, like The Ship Song, followed by Into My Arms, and The Weeping Song in the encore.
The concert worked like a mantra. Like a cleansing of soul and body, a total purification, so truly did Nick Cave and his crew pour their art into the stage theater itself. With his at times downright demonic magnetism, Cave penetrated the deepest and darkest corners of our souls. A true shepherd of souls. Short, concise gestures full of minimalism, which, in their mutual dialogue of otherwise sacred simplicity, ring out as extremely biting, provocative and at moments even bizarre. They smash taboos and clichés and give music, as an art, a completely new qualitative component and an artistic dimension that’s impossible to pin down. The darkness of all darknesses. Cave and the band repeatedly built up layered soundscapes that, out of just a few simple tones and through repetition, created an extraordinarily gripping atmospheric backdrop, which the entranced audience communed with in total hypnosis. The sight of the whole scene was unbelievable. Two solid hours flew by in an instant. Simple as that. When someone stirs up emotions in you, time and space stop mattering. Only the fusion with the energy we call music. And that evening in Ljubljana, the soul-awakener and black sorcerer Nick Cave delivered it in abundance.
The Nick Cave spectacle at Stožice can simply be declared one of the highlights of this year’s concert offerings in Slovenia.
Setlist
1. Anthrocene
2. Jesus Alone
3. Magneto
4. Higgs Boson Blues
5. From Her to Eternity
6. Tupelo
7. Jubilee Street
8. The Ship Song
9. Into My Arms
10. Girl in Amber
11. I Need You
12. Red Right Hand
13, The Mercy Seat
14. Distant Sky
15. Skeleton Tree
—encore—
16. The Weeping Song
17. Stagger Lee
18. Push the Sky Away
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