I've forsaken this page for too long. To the three or four of you who read this thing, I apologize for the dearth of updates in recent months. Life, again, has gotten in the way--which is no excuse, I know. And though I have dozens of ideas for posts floating around in the ether of my mind, I have failed to make any real progress in committing them to virtual paper. But good stuff is coming. Really. Soonish, I think.For now, allow me (or my former self) to wax ecstatic on the subject of Nick Cave. It would seem with Halloween looming on the horizon, Cave, his Bad Seeds, and his latest invention, Grinderman, provide the right kind of thunder, lightning, and dark clouds to your haunted days and lives. The following is a concert review I wrote nine years ago. On that night long ago, Nick Cave and company were every bit as good as I said they were.
Nick Cave with Warren Ellis, Jim White and Susan Stenger at the Paramount Theatre, March 29, 2001
“Intensity Never Flags in Spare Cave Concert”
By Joe Ehrbar
Pasty-faced London singer Nick Cave, long and lanky and dressed in a jet-black suit that matched his slicked-back hair, emerged from the shadows of the Paramount Theatre's backstage Thursday night, moving forward beneath the red lights with a purposeful gait, acknowledging his applauding audience with a simple wave, before situating himself behind a black grand piano.
Seated, he took a long draw from his cigarette, placed it carefully in an ashtray and, without warning, banged his hands on the keys and wailed with his deep voice a furious, welt-licked rendition of "West Country Girl," a song that was supposed to be about love, but was instead swollen with unbridled rage.
His haunting presence and monstrous baritone cast an ominous pall over the evening, to the delight of a transfixed sold-out crowd. Cave was soon joined by the three members of his band, violinist Warren Ellis and drummer Jim White, both of the Dirty Three, and bassist Susan Stenger.
Indeed, it was a scaled-down Cave show, in stark contrast to his 1999 Seattle appearance with the Bad Seeds. Some songs, such as “Henry’s Dream” and “Do You Love Me? (Part 2),” had to be reworked to fit the sparse setting. Even so, Cave and company rendered an astoundingly intense and theatrical 90-minute performance, with the climaxes more pronounced and the subtleties more fragile.
At the piano, Cave faced his dark, tempestuous material—consisting primarily of his four most recent albums, including the forthcoming No More Shall We Part—with all the cruel enthusiasm of a night stalker lurking in the shadows, hunting his prey, his band co-conspirators urged him onward with a roots-tinged clamor.
Highlights abounded. “Stagger Lee,” about the "baddest man who ever lived," said Cave, hit with as much psychotic force as the crazed original from 1996's Murder Ballads.
“The Mercy Seat,” a Cave original which he introduced as a Johnny Cash song (Cash recorded it for his latest album, Solitary Man), simmered to a boil as desperately and dreadfully as its studio sibling, with Ellis, back to the crowd and silhouetted by the golden lights above him, tugging and tearing his bow across the violin, echoing the cries of Cave’s protagonist, who’s being cooked by the “mercy seat”—the electric chair.
The Johnny Cash reference was hardly coincidental. Like those of the other Man in Black, Cave's songs are populated by cold-blooded killers, lovelorn misfits and God-fearing innocents, most of whom are searching for some sort of redemption for their cursed existence.
Many find deliverance in love. And it's the love song that is at the very core of Cave's music. However, as emphasized Thursday, Cave's idea of love isn't the trite pap heard on the radio. His songs embraced a gothic romanticism steeped in sorrow (“People Ain't No Good,” “Sad Waters”), longing (“Darker with the Day”), obsession (“Love Letters”), lust (“Do You Love Me? Part 2”) and crimes of passion (“Henry Lee”).
Sure, he surrendered to the chirping birds of love's sweet melody with the ballad "Into My Arms," but for him to accept love’s warm embrace, he had to plumb its colder, murkier, even macabre depths.
The night wasn’t all dank and dour, though. Cave allowed his devilish sense of humor to play for a bit and even bantered with the crowd. “How old are you, Nick,” a female fan called out between songs. “I’m very old ... too old for you,” returned the 42-year-old singer. With that he played the opening notes to a new song titled “God Is in the House,” a seemingly earnest hymn, with a big ironic grin.
And at the end of his set, when dozens in the audience blurted song requests, even requesting one another to shut up, Cave drew the curtains on the evening with “People Ain't No Good.”
And the Dark Man disappeared, as quickly as he had arrived.
Originally published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 31, 2001.
