NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS : LIVE GOD

Disc One (52:57)

1. Frogs
2. Wild God
3. O Children
4. From Her To Eternity
5. Long Dark Night
6. Cinnamon Horses
7. Tupelo
8. Conversion
9. Bright Horses

Disc Two (46:45)

1. Joy
2. I Need You
3. Carnage
4. Red Right Hand
5. White Elephant
6. O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)
7. Papa Won't Leave You, Henry
8. Into My Arms
9. As The Waters Cover The Sea

Label : Bad Seed

Venue : Accor Arena, Paris, France

Recording Date : November 17, 2024

Release Date : December 5, 2025

Review (Humo) : Na het Europese luik van de ‘Wild God’-tour lag Nick Cave (68) thuis op de zetel uit te blazen naast vrouw Suzie, maar toen begonnen de berichtjes binnen te lopen. Over Bob Dylan, die het laatste concert van de tour had meegepikt en zich op X lovend had uitgelaten: ‘Saw Nick Cave in Paris recently, (...) and I was really struck by that song ‘Joy’.’ Dylan had drie dagen eerder het Europese luik van zijn ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’-veldtocht afgerond, en was blijkbaar blijven hangen om een concert van Cave mee te pikken. Dat alleen al – maar pas achteraf te weten komen dat je net tweeënhalf uur voor Bob Dylan hebt staan zingen, wat moet dát zijn? Anderzijds: misschien maar beter zo. Ter zake: dat Parijse concert van 17 november 2024 staat sinds een dik halfjaar op YouTube, en is het tastbare bewijs dat Dylan niet zomaar wat uit z’n nek lulde. Het is, zoals Cave het zelf noemt, an antidote to despair, en vormt nu ook de ruggengraat van ‘Live God’, de vijfde liveplaat van Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Dat de plaat niet ‘Live in Paris’ heet, en dat er in de liner notes van ‘Live God’ ook nergens wordt aangegeven waar de opnames vandaan komen, is enigszins raar, omdat de lichtstad meteen na de adembenemende opener ‘Frogs’ een ferm saluut krijgt, en herhaaldelijk door Cave wordt aangehaald: ‘Paris!’, ‘Fucking Paris!’, ‘Paris, you’re the best!’ et cetera. Als je de YouTube- en de plaatversie naast elkaar legt, wordt het net dat tikje begrijpelijker: uiteraard zijn de opnames voor ‘Live God’ wat opgepoetst, mocht een stem hier en daar wat klaarder in de mix worden gezet en een iets te enthousiaste gitaar naar achteren geschoven, maar sommige tracks blijken ook gewoon van elders te komen. Een paar speeches van Cave zijn verdwenen, evenals een handvol songs, en afsluiter ‘As the Waters Cover the Sea’ stond in Parijs niet eens op de setlist. Begrijpelijk dus, maar ‘Paris, fucking Paris’, wát een plaat. ‘Wild God’ (hier beter dan op ‘Wild God’) volgt meteen na ‘Frogs’, op de hielen gezeten door ‘O Children’. Drie songs ver, een kwartier dus, en je vóélt het publiek – net als de luisteraar thuis – uit Caves hand eten. Trouwens, wat op de plaat in ‘O Children’ als een Bad Seeds-vreemde sologitaar klinkt, blijkt op de beelden de in prikkeldraad gedraaide viool van Warren Ellis te zijn. ‘Jubilee Street’ (in Parijs nogal mak opgebouwd, naar een weliswaar stomende finale) wordt op ‘Live God’ weggelaten om de entree van zijn bekendste song about a girl sterker te maken: ‘From Her to Eternity’, met inderdaad een zoals steeds fenomenale aanzet, maar gaandeweg verzandend in een publieksspel deze aardedonkere klassieker onwaardig. En dan die yeah yeah yeahs tussendoor... Je bent toch Fred Durst niet, Nick? ‘Long Dark Night’ en ‘Cinnamon Horses’ (hoogtepunt!) zorgen voor verpozing, maar in het niet minder donkere ‘Tupelo’ doet hij het weer. Yeah yeah yeahs per strekkende meter, ‘meezingen en armpjes in de lucht!’, nog net geen people on the right, people on the left, en dat acht minuten lang: het had níét gehoeven. Wij moesten aan de woorden van Mick Harvey denken, nadat hij in 2009 uit The Bad Seeds was gestapt: ‘Making people clap to ‘Tupelo’? Come on...’ Een klein smetje dus, gelukkig meteen gevolgd door twee nieuwe hoogtepunten: ‘Conversion’, niet het minst vanwege de absoluut hemelse backings, en het door Warren Ellis’ hoge stem ingeleide ‘Bright Horses’ uit ‘Ghosteen’. Dylans favoriet ‘Joy’ is – net als op plaat – minder ons ding, maar wie bij het ijzingwekkende ‘I Need You’ uit rouwplaat ‘Skeleton Tree’ geen krop in de keel krijgt, moet dringend de eigen polsslag eens controleren. Dat ‘The Mercy Seat’ werd geschrapt, is – wegens geen versie voor de eeuwigheid, daar in Parijs – verdedigbaar, net als de omissie van ‘The Weeping Song’, die samen met ‘Into My Arms’ wellicht een iets te lam sluitstuk van de plaat had gevormd. Bovendien is ‘Carnage’ even eerder al een aangenaam rustpunt, en het diep snijdende ‘O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)’ weglaten zou een hoofdzonde zijn geweest. Jim Sclavunos neemt de drumstokken over van Larry Mullins voor een meer dan stevig ‘Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry’, en als Cave een in wezen beresterke versie van ‘Red Right Hand’ niet onnodig lang had gerekt en ontmanteld (wéér een hoop meezingmomenten!), zouden er boven deze recensie zonder enige twijfel vijf sterren hebben gestaan. Maar die yeah yeah yeahs van Nick Cave: no no no, die zullen wij écht nooit gewoon worden. Op 28 juni 2026 staan Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds op Live Is Live in Antwerpen. Bidt u met ons mee dat daar geen nah-nááh-nana-nah van komt?

Review (Mojo) : On November 17, 2024, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds performed the final, scorching show of their European Wild God Tour at the Accor Arena in Paris. In the audience that night was none other than Bob Dylan, who was moved two days later to post about the gig on social media. “I was really struck by that song Joy,” Dylan wrote of the stately, moving highlight of 2024’s Wild God in which Cave is visited by the spectre of a “flaming boy” (impossible not to read as his late son Arthur) who offers him comfort in his grief and gently urges him to move on. Dylan singled out the song’s standout lines, “We’ve all had too much sorrow/Now is the time for joy”. “I was thinking to myself, Yeah, that’s about right,” he offered. Cave was stunned by the endorsement, calling it “a lovely pulse of joy that penetrated my exhausted, zombied state”. Fittingly, Joy, its hymnal qualities elevated in the arena environment, provides the near-seven-minute centrepiece of this 18-track live album (Cave’s first with The Bad Seeds since 2013’s radio session set Live From KCRW), recorded in, as the singer puts it here, “Paris… fucking Paris!” (and other unspecified stops on the jaunt). It’s a record that celebrates Cave and The Bad Seeds’ decades-long transformation from agents of darkness to deliverers of hope and even ecstasy. The result is somewhere between a tent revival show and early-days Elvis in Vegas. Eight of the 10 songs from Wild God are featured, with its title track, the slinky Frogs and the Presley-evoking Long Dark Night walking tall alongside his catalogue classics (From Her To Eternity, Red Right Hand). This six-piece Bad Seeds (featuring Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood on bass) are supplemented with a four-strong gospel choir, matching the scale of the songs. The audience(s) react appropriately, delightedly echoing Cave’s cries of “Stop!” in Conversion. Meanwhile, all rough edges have been retained: we hear Cave’s microphone fall clunking to the stage floor and one incomprehensible heckler shouting nonsense at him. “I don’t know what that is,” the singer protests.Unexpected peaks come with the dubby, dynamic expansion of White Elephant (from Cave and Warren Ellis’s 2021 set Carnage) and the piano ballad delicacy of I Need You (2016’s Skeleton Tree), in which the singer’s voice takes on the tremulous quality of the recorded version, like an actor slipping back into character. It ends with him ceaselessly intoning “just-breathe-just-breathe”, prompting elated applause, and ending only when he runs out of puff. And so ultimately Live God does what the best live albums do: capturing both the thrills and spills of the performance and the audience’s rapturous response to it. It’s so good maybe even Bob will pick up a copy.

Review (The Quietus) : With last year’s Wild God, Nick Cave continued his remarkable run over the past decade of highly praised Top 10 hit records. Alongside the soundtrack work and other endeavours, as well as his public grace in deep grief, it’s a streak that has smoothed out and consolidated the older Cave’s reputation, positioning him as a vaulted mainstream-adjacent icon. Cave is now in what you might call his ‘establishment figure era’. A Cave who shows up at Royal events. In the early 1990s, it would’ve been plain impossible to imagine him ‘beloved’ like this, but here we are and, despite some pronouncements and opinions that make me very uncomfortable, he wears it well. This subsequent Wild God tour, vividly captured here from Paris, has been a sprawling, multi-year affair – and it’s ongoing. Next summer, among the big European outdoor shows, they’ll even bring it to my back garden, Preston Park, in Cave’s (both of our) long-adopted home town of Brighton. If I don’t go, I’ll still hear his declamatory echoes from my house. Because of all that, this show is big and dominant and rollicking. This iteration of the Bad Seeds is a seven-piece band, with Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood onboard, as well as Warren Ellis firmly in place as lead foil on guitar, and the crucial addition of four backing singers. Of course, Wild God songs dominate proceedings. We kick off with ‘Frogs’ and the title track, with the album providing eight of eighteen tracks in total. Dotted through them are a handful of classics and one song each from two previous ‘establishment era Cave’ albums, Ghosteen (‘Bright Horses’) and Skeleton Tree (‘I Need You’). The bombast side of things is immensely powerful from the off. It’s the glue. Indeed, more than any other aspect of this live music, it is the choir – a triumphant icing of richly layered, though regularly in unison, often enormous, high quality backing vocals – that lends this concert both its sepulchral juggernaut energy and its sheer ‘open space’ rolling vastness. Like Merry Clayton did with the Rolling Stones that one time, there is a sound underpinning everything here that’s not quite truly ‘of the band’ – though that’s not to say it doesn’t fit, or sticks out in the wrong way. The ‘Gimme Shelter’ reference comes to mind quite early on, when they sing the chorus line from ‘O Children’, album closer of 2004’s Abattoir Blues companion piece The Lyre of Orpheus.Back in those old days, when the Bad Seeds themselves sang backing, it was squonkier and less focused. More male, too. Now, these potent singers go a long way towards universalising Cave’s sound. Spikier than the opening three songs, at this scale ’From Her To Eternity’ has a sense of mechanical, apocalyptic music theatre about it. The preacher’s declaimed versification. The piano pinpointing the riff. This stuff will recur throughout. Comparing the sheer weighty perfection of the choral singing to the general looseness (some occasionally iffy fiddle playing, for example, on ‘Long Dark Night’) offers a clue to how this show as a whole works so powerfully. The shadow-world grimy grind of the earlier Bad Seeds is still very much present, sitting within its more professionalised modern facade. Well, more than a facade, but you see what I’m getting at: early single ‘Tupelo’ is a good example, where the simple relentless chug of the backing track remains loose, human, yet the voices pile in with the drums, supplying the lion’s share of dynamic shift, lifting everything to that new dimension. This band is a crumbling old market place that’s been gentrified with a shiny new frontispiece and a major paint job, yet the shops are the same, as are the punters. That’s not a criticism. They’re still here. For me, the quietest moments work least well. Cave’s overwrought melodrama requires the back alley impoverished, addicted, outsider energy of his earlier eras, rather than this comfortable, even imperious, audience conducting showman. ‘Conversion’ gives me the ick at the start, but minutes later in the same song, when everything kicks off, a hurricane around him, and he goes full pelt, it is wholly transcendent. The carrying on of call-and-response after the song ends is powerful rather than cringe. But then, ‘Bright Horses’ – and suddenly he’s the narrator of an off-West-End show that I’d run hard away from. A beautiful odd exception is ‘O Wow O Wow’, written and introduced for Melbourne songwriter, some time Bad Seeds member Anita Lane (“do you know who she is?”) who died in 2021. This one sidesteps my issue with fromage via wobbliness and quirky sounds, an extended gentle groove (feels like a backing loop) and a lengthy sample of Lane herself chatting to close. He gives her her voice. It’s great. Another exception is ‘Into My Arms’, perhaps Cave’s most universally praised moment. It’s performed on solo piano, yet still heralded as a singalong with an “alright, Paris…” into the first chorus. Even with the artifice of encouragement, it’s affecting and effective. I wonder if perhaps – nowadays – sexy, romantic Cave, while capable of yuck, is pure believable in a way that – nowadays – violent, threatening Cave is not quite so much. He’s working on too grand a scale, with too orchestrated a process, too much support. It risks falling into cartoon territory. ‘Papa Won’t Leave You Henry’, one of the big favourites, typifies this: again the chorus and bluster and chanting of the choir all work hard to tidy up and bring focus to the whole, after the melodramatic verses flirt with silliness. So here’s a sum of it: the big stuff is phenomenal, with rare anthemic heft and non-lyrical melodic chanting shared with the audience, gathering everyone up in its power. This is an unchecked rolling freight train of humane music from an older time. Meanwhile, one only needs to be a touch more credulous (forgiving? familiar?) than me to allow those quieter moments to feel intimate and moving, instead of resisting, my pushing away to arm’s length, for them to operate perfectly as in-betweens and intakes of breath, a concert’s natural ebb and flow, with their own deep emotional value. I’d be churlish to deny it. After the heady sensual victory of ‘Into My Arms’, the closing track seems to acknowledge the backing singers’ outsized contribution: a short, piano-accompanied ‘As The Waters Cover The Sea’ handing everything over to their voices.