A Review for Pollstar of the Bad Seeds’ Wild God Show at Brooklyn’s Barclays Arena
The incomparable Nick Cave is a gothic punk rock preacher man, one who has somehow survived life’s brutality and glory and come out the other side with greater wisdom, grace, depth, candor and compassion. On April 17, the 67-year-old Australian and his excellent band The Bad Seeds, harnessed those powers to transform Barclays Arena into a church of Wild Gods.
It was an unlikely space for an artist known for murder ballads and intimate audience engagements. But even with nearly 17,000 seats filled, he pulled the people in close, including those in the farthest sections. A master showman, he conducted the crowd through raucous highs (notably “Jubilee Street”) and into the deep sadness of the Bad Seeds’ ballads. The set included songs, or “stories,” from his new album Wild God, (PIAS Records) as well as what he called “extremely old geriatric mid-period Nick Cave.”
It was, as one fan put it, a “beautiful, majestic, melancholic, dramatic, sad, joyous, spiritual, explosive, devastative, draining, heart-wrenching, transcendent” show. The die-hards in the front rows looked like baby birds or fighter fish rising-up to him as he approached, hand extended. They were rewarded again and again as he knelt into them, clasped their hands, pointed his finger in their faces, and seemingly even recognized them. “You again…” Continue reading on Pollstar
Photo by Nate Greene and Corrine Botz
