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A Spellbinding Performance: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds in Montreal
I never thought I’d get an opportunity to see Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds in Montreal. His first record was released almost a decade before I was born. He’s older than my parents. These past few years, he’s been dealt a somewhat hellish hand (a red right one, perhaps?).
After the incredibly tragic early deaths of two sons in a span of just seven years, I figured Nick Cave would never tour again, instead opting to spend quiet years with his remaining loved ones. I expected him to step back, maybe not necessarily from writing and recording music, but from the oft-documented chaos of the touring rockstar life. Retiring from the road would have been completely understandable, given the circumstances.
But as I watched him on stage at Place Bell in Laval on April 24 on his 21-date North American Wild God tour, I understood it all. Being the lifelong genuinely true artist Nick Cave is, he could never just stop. He would use his creative genius to transform world-shattering situations into deep, beautiful art to share with his fans, the people who “saved” him. To quote the man himself in a 2022 interview with The New York Times, “People say, How can you go on tour? But for me it’s the other way around. How could I not?”
Nick Cave's Magnetic Presence Lights Up the Stage
Backed by his Bad Seeds and an incredible quartet of vocalists adorned in sparkling angelic silver robes, the supergroup delivered a whopping 2.5-hour, 18-song set with a 4 song encore. They commenced with three tracks from his latest offering, 2024’s “Wild God,” engaging with the audience between songs.
When a fan yelled out, “I love you,” he briefly paused before saying, “I love you too,” to erupting cheers. “It’s not a platitude,” he continued, solemnly – “I actually do love you.” And the love was felt throughout Place Bell, as Cave jumped around the stage, held hands with the audience, and regularly shared his mic in between tossing it around the stage. Between Cave’s repeated mic throwing and the need to constantly wrangle and untangle Warren Ellis’ various patch cables, the stagehands were working hard. The first standing ovation came after “Jubilee Street,” marking the first time Cave dramatically threw his microphone and ran to the piano to pound on the keys.
After a fantastic rendition of “From Her To Eternity,” the crowd was treated to the weird delight of hearing Warren Ellis yell a series of Quebecois curse words, to which Cave laughed and replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Introducing his compositions, Cave remarked that “every song I sing is about a child or a girl and they’re all dark and they’re all sad and they’re all beautiful.” Of “Bright Horses,” he jovially told the crowd, “When I wrote this song, I thought that’s good, then I took the rest of the day off.” Before commencing “Joy,” he quipped, “[after writing] this song, I took the f*cking week off.” The stage went dark for “I Need You,” performed as a piano solo by Cave before the Bad Seeds rejoined for “Carnage” from the 2021 Nick Cave and Warren Ellis album of the same name.
A Night of Emotion, Storytelling, and Stunning Sound
Fan favourite “Red Right Hand” earned the band another standing O. A red glove-clad fan held Cave’s hand for a portion of the song, during which Cave threw not only his mic, but a mic stand too. That wild energy remained for “The Mercy Seat” and “White Elephant,” the show’s closing tracks. During the four-song encore, I recognized some folks from the metro ride to Place Bell – the elderly couple I had offered my seat to were now front row and centre, belting out every word. My smile grew so wide that my cheeks started to hurt.
Repeat Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds showgoers got a special treat on this tour – the inclusion of “Skeleton Tree,” the title track of his 2016 album. It was “previously banished,” Cave explained, because it “felt cursed.” The curse was thankfully lifted this year, marking its first performance since 2017.
The show concluded with “Into My Arms,” which, while performed just like the studio recording, felt exceptionally soft and stripped down in comparison to the rest of the rousing set. But it served as the perfect closer, with Cave leading the audience in a beautiful sing-along. The Wild God tour continues in the United States throughout April and May, with one more Canadian date at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver on May 11 – already sold out.
Enjoy the show, you Lovely Creatures.
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