Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at the Sydney Opera House. Picture: Dan Boud Source: Supplied
- MUSIC
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. February 26.
NICK Cave looked to the roof of the Opera House forlornly halfway through his piano ballad God is in the House, a gesture that implied he needed some divine intervention to help him remember the lyrics.
He had decided to play the song only when it was called out by someone in the audience, but hadn't considered that he and his Bad Seeds colleagues hadn't played it for a while. It more or less fell apart.
Not that it mattered. By then, three-quarters of the way through this first show of the Bad Seeds' Australian tour, Cave, a master of stagecraft, had won over the crowd more than enough to be forgiven a few hiccups.
If God wasn't with him, there was a sizeable congregation on the stage to give Cave a helping hand. Aside from the Bad Seeds this performance boasted a mini-orchestra and a choir of primary school children. "Where are you kids from?" Cave inquired, as if perhaps they had walked in off the street. "Annandale" they sang, almost.
The choir and the string players were there to add grandeur to some of the songs from Cave and the Bad Seeds latest album, Push the Sky Away, which they played in its entirety and in sequence for the first half of the show.
It was a bold move, given that not everyone in the room would have been familiar with the material, but it was refreshing to hear Cave in this setting, with the more ambient textures of Push the Sky Away's songs, embellished by the ensemble and by the Opera House itself.
Wherever Cave cavorts, however, bombast is never far away. The set really took off during Jubilee Street, one of the best moments from Push the Sky Away, with the Seeds firing up an incendiary rock 'n' roll rumble during which their frontman slipped coolly and violently into his familiar sexy swagger, demanding attention that from then on was impossible to let go. The dynamic lifted further during the second half, when the back catalogue kicked in. From Her To Eternity, Red Right Hand and Deanna saw Cave at his most theatrical and in strong voice.
It would have been nice to hear more of the choir, the band's backing vocals and the strings, all of which were too low in the mix. Warren Ellis's violin and Ed Kuepper's guitars weren't always audible either.
Cave had to apologise to the choir early on after making a joke about his genitals. Fortunately they had been sent home to bed by the time he got to the encore.
Cave's take on the old blues rant Stagger Lee was a gloriously overblown way to end the show. It must be a contender for the filthiest song ever to reverberate around this hallowed venue.
Sydney Opera House, tonight. Melbourne March 2; Adelaide March 3; Perth March 6; Brisbane March 8; Enmore Theatre, Sydney March 9. Tickets $95.50-$105.50
MUSIC
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. February 26.
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