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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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AN EVENING WITH
NICK CAVE
The Palace Theatre, London, October
11th 2009
As
the very knowledgeable readers of Whiskyfun will
know, Mr Nick
Cave is something of a polymath.
The writer of some of the most achingly tender
lyrics you’ll find on record (think of ‘Into
my arms’ from The Boatman’s Call),
he also scribbles occasional outpourings of splenetic
violence (“with an ashtray as big as a fucking
really big brick I split his head in half”)
and managed to summarise the nature of the human
condition in the seminal ‘No pussy blues’.
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| He
plays piano and sings with the Bad
Seeds, of late probably the most powerful rock
and roll band on the road, and also fronts, swaggering
with Fender Thinline in hand, the uber-grungy Grinderman.
He has written film scores and even appeared on
the silver screen. He’s a poet; and a bit
of a scholar famously writing an introduction to
an edition of St Mark’s Gospel. And tonight
he’s an author, reading from his new work,
The
Death of Bunny Munroe, in which, according to
one critic, we see him “explore or at least
entertain the notion that there might be a dimension
to human life that is resistant to scientifically
empirical explanation or calibration”. |
| It’s
the story of a sex-obsessed salesman, who is rarely
far from a handy bottle of hand cream to help him
relieve his desires. He has a depressed wife, but
she dies. He has a son; he doesn’t. There’s
also a serial killer on the run (more whacking then),
and a sticky end in sight for our eponymous hero;
and it’s not as if Bunny doesn’t give
a toss. He’s haunted by a sense of impending
doom: he knows there’s something bad coming
at the climax. |
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| The
novel is available in printed form, but also exists
as a brilliantly conceived audiobook, with a stunning
i-Phone application. |
| Cave
reads the whole book (some of it on video) and there
is a soundtrack composed by Cave and his Bad Seeds,
Grinderman and film-score collaborator, Warren Ellis.
Ellis is on stage tonight, performing some of the
sound accompaniment (some is on tape) while Cave
reads three chapters in all, each accompanied by
a visual score. It’s heavy-going stuff. Dark,
uncomfortably explicit (an explicitness which verges
on the tedious), enlivened only by the occasional
joke (the bulk of which involving either Kylie Minogue
or Avril Lavigne, or both). And frankly it’s
not read that well: Cave stumbles over quite a lot
of the phrasing, which prevents him picking up the
kind of pace and rhythm that his carefully chosen
words need. This is partly because he’s reading
from disordered publisher’s page-proofs and
quite possibly, suggested the Photographer (who’s
off duty tonight, no cameras allowed), because he’s
a little uncomfortable with the material himself.
Thankfully he’s also got bassist Martyn P
Casey with him, and in between some mostly uninspiring
questions and answers (I blame the audience for
the paucity of the questions), they play a brilliant,
almost ‘unplugged’ set. |
| Or
at least it’s almost every song you would
want Nick Cave to play if he were in your living-room
without the Bad Seeds. And the audience love it. |
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| He
started with ‘West country girl’, followed
by ‘Hold on to yourself’ from this year’s
Dig Lazarus Dig (after a anxious hunt for the lyrics),
‘Lime tree arbour’ and ‘Mercy
Seat’. The piano playing was spare, Ellis’s
contributions well chosen and largely recessive
with the bass holding it all together. Cave’s
voice was remarkably tuneful, freed from having
to sing above the cacophonous Bad Seeds, and added
a sometimes missing dimension of gentleness to the
songs. Pausing only for the occasional sip of throat
tea he sang the wonderful ‘God is in the house’,
Tupelo (with Ellis drumming on a single snare),
‘The weeping song’, ‘The ship
song’, and ‘Dig Lazarus dig’.
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| It
must have been about then that someone asked (strangely,
the only questioner to get a microphone): “Do
you think Polly
Harvey would join you on stage to sing if she
were here?”. Following a brief exchange with
one of the boxes, Polly (the object of Cave’s
desire in ‘Into my arms’, and for that
matter most of ‘The Boatman’s Call’)
duly appeared (as did two video-camera wielding
blokes from out of nowhere) to duet, perhaps not
quite spontaneously, on ‘Henry Lee’.
After that he finished with ‘Babe, you turn
me on’ and a version of ‘Grinderman’’
that could have come out of a garage. |
| Perhaps
the best moment of the evening was saved for his
return for the encore. When he announced that he’d
sing a couple more songs one of the persistent questioners
stood and asked “why no more readings from
the book?”. “Well I’ve read three
pieces”, said Cave, “and it’s
very complicated with all the music and stuff. Will
Self just sits on a stool and reads for ten minutes
and then fucks off”. You could see the majority
of the audience were cringing at the suggestion
of more gruesome prose. It was hardly surprising
that when an exasperated Cave eventually said, “Well
what do you want, reading or songs?”, the
response “songs” came loud and clear
from the overwhelming majority of the crowd, who
were rewarded with ‘Into my arms’ and
‘Lucy’. |
And
I can assure you that although Bunny Munroe has
its moments, and I do heartily recommend that
you look at the i-Phone application, the majority
of people who left the theatre in a state of delight
will remember the evening not for the member-wielding
Munroe, but for Mr Cave’s delightfully performed
songs. – Nick Morgan
Listen:
Nick
Cave & The Bad Seeds on MySpace. |
Nick Cave and PJ Harvey |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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There's nothing more down there... |
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