On a ripsnortingly beautiful Wellington evening, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds took a mostly 40+ crowd on an emotional rollercoaster.
On Thursday night at the TSB Arena, the Aussie cult figure was joined by his long-time bandmates for 25 songs, which culminated in a sombre rendition of Into My Arms.
As the support act, Aldous Harding, who has accompanied Cave across his current Australasian jaunt, was typically terrific.
The New Zealand singer-songwriter's percussionless performance wet the whistle as the big shed on the capital’s waterfront filled up with an audience of Cave disciples.
With Harding offstage, the words 'Wild God' – the title of Cave and his Bad Seeds' 2024 album – appeared on two big screens on either side of the stage.
The wait was on.
Highlights included O Children, introduced by Cave as a "depressing mid-career" song from Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus – the 2004 album that first got me into his music after two of its tracks, Nature Boy and There She Goes My Beautiful World, appeared on a compilation around the same time.
The band played neither on this night. But it didn’t matter. During O Children, Cave’s sparse and melancholy piano strokes dovetailed with his intense baritone vocals as the big performance space was awash with bright white lights.
After 50-plus years of performing, Cave's character endures. He reached his hands to touch his audience across the front row and even allowed an eager man standing right next to the barrier to sing (but mainly shout) a few words.
In the black and white film (which is on streaming service Kanopy), Ellis said it's not his place to quiz Cave on his lyrics. He sticks to the music.
Separating the music from the artist is troublesome, though, with Cave’s performances a conduit for his lived experience – including the unimaginable torment from losing two sons.
But there were timely laughs amongst the sorrow throughout the hours-long show. At one point, Cave referred to Ellis as "shy and retiring". He is not that. This tongue-in-cheek moment was met with cheers from the audience, leaving Ellis beaming behind his long grey beard.
"I'm sitting on the balcony, reading Flannery O'Connor", Cave sang at one point – just the sort of obscure literary reference that adds to his mystique and which his followers lap up.
Like O'Connor (author of novels like Wise Blood, which Californian artist Weyes Blood is named after), Cave and his Bad Seeds deal in traits accustomed to the Southern Gothic genre. Pain, healing and religious references are never far from his lips.
Worlds collided during Red Right Hand, one of Cave’s signature tracks from 1994. The song shot back into the limelight as the theme music to the Cillian Murphy-starring TV show Peaky Blinders, which also features our own Sam Neill as an Irish police officer.
During the encore, one of Cave's four backing singers, Janet Ramus, took centre stage.
The British soul singer shared vocal dominance with Cave on the duet Henry Lee, which featured some pointed lyrics for Wellingtonians in the house - “And the wind did howl and the wind did blow.”
But not on this night. Outside, the pre-Waitangi Day skies were electric blue and the breeze was gentle at worst.
There was time for a penultimate track, and the Bad Seeds vacated the stage to leave Cave alone at his piano for the eerie Skeleton Tree from his 2016 record of the same name. After all that, he brought the audience down softly with a poignant rendition of Into My Arms.
