“We’ve been in a strange place,” says Nick Cave, three songs into the first concert on the Bad Seeds’ world tour of Skeleton Tree. “We haven’t played for a long time and it feels like suddenly I’m coming out and blinking into the light.”
The lights he blinks into currently are swivelling around the rather dated dome that is the Derwent Entertainment Centre, a venue in Hobart’s outskirts that is underused because, according to a mournful local, “we don’t get many big bands down here.”
There is a lot of pain to read between the lines of Cave’s words. Everyone here knows at least part of the story: the loss he and his wife, Susie Bick, experienced in 2015 when their teenage son died, and how last year’s album Skeleton Tree channeled his grief in the aftermath. The empathy of fans was further intensified by Andrew Dominik’s “making of” documentary, One More Time With Feeling.
Still, what to expect of a concert showcasing an album described by one writer as “a requiem mass winging its way out of Cave’s unconscious”? There was a chance this show could have been in a Don’t Look Back format in which Skeleton Tree would be presented in its entirety, followed or preceded by a set of older songs. The new album was too bleak and hymn-like to suffer the interjections of songs from a 30-year back-catalogue. Moreover, was there any purpose in interrupting Skeleton Tree’s existential ruminations? To lighten the mood? To allow us to move and sing and enjoy the bittersweet bliss of our favourite old song? To experience an uninterrupted live rendition of Skeleton Tree may help to shoulder some of its pain.
That doesn’t happen. The Bad Seeds start with Jesus Alone, then time-travel immediately back to 1985 to play Tupelo from The Firstborn Is Dead followed by 1994’s Red Right Hand. The songs remind us how bracing the Bad Seeds are, live, when they escalate from brooding backing band to electrifying din, and back again, in an instant.
The songs continue to jump between old and new but as the night goes on, a logic becomes apparent. Cave draws energy from the older songs, which he then drains out into tracks from Skeleton Tree. He favours Warren Ellis’s side of the stage where he reaches into a huddle of outstretched arms to shine the full beam of his charisma down upon them. I’m not there, but I’m not far off either; I can feel his charm radiating outwards. It is a treat, too, to see Ellis wringing out his customary wails and walls of sound on a violin and guitar.
The new songs are introduced by Cave with trepidation. “We’re going to try a trio now,” Cave says before they play Girl In Amber, Anthrocene and Magneto. Before he plays I Need You he says: “We’re going to give this one a go.”
His hesitation is touching but unwarranted. The new songs are delivered with their dark magic intact and the Bad Seeds harmonise with the delicacy of a schoolboy choir. The only disappointments are that Anthrocene is stripped of its waves of nervous percussion and Danish soprano Else Torp is present on Distant Sky only as a giant projection. With eight male Bad Seeds onstage, it is a shame she could not be shipped to the antipodes too, or perhaps replaced with an Australian singer.
The show is not without its first-show-on-the-tour faltering. The visuals are inconsistent, there are gear failures and Cave truncates, and restarts, two songs. “Hang on, hang on,” he says when Into My Arms is not proceeding as planned. “This is too soft. It’s just a big fucking mess up here.”
At other times he is wickedly funny; irreverent to the core. “Warren,” he whines theatrically, after getting bored bantering to a woman near the front row. “Start the fucking song!”
The show is an emotional rollercoaster – but the moods are erratic in a way that feels fitting.
