Nick Cave
For decades, we’ve known about an indie, gothic suit – liking star Nick Cave from concerts, 40 years already and after all the trouble the man did not hit the ground as we are talking about music values. The band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (www. nickcave.com) is changing band members, but now in July 2020, due to a Covid19 situation, Nick Cave did his magnificent solo performance Alone at Alexander Palace to a streaming audience. It is the first time that some band members such as a fantastic and very important member of the band, Warren Ellis had this pleasure to actually see Nick performing. Nick said once, I am still a punk rocker, but now I have a tailor to design my suits. Alone and sensitive as it is, Nick Cave to us, the streaming audience, showed the best of his inside. We heard his voice and his sad songs usually done with the help of an amazing maestro handling violin and vibraphones of Warren Ellis, now only in the version with piano. I really liked seeing good old Nick Cave that I have seen so many times in concert alive, so sensitive and emotional, alone. He was actually quite nervous. At this event, it was clear that he gave away himself emotionally, as he sang about failed romance, grief, and basically his life. No, he is not the same boy from the period of the punk band The Boy Next Door or from the period of the Bad Seeds band just even recently, and I only saw him alive last year the last time. Since the death of his son Arthur, the man changed, and just recently losing his mother, Dawn will, I guess, affect on his further work. He breaks things up, he breaks down alone. I imagine it is easier to be part of the crowd on the stage than all alone out there. And he did it!
The inherent loneliness of songs like “(Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For” or the old one “The Weeping Song.” In Idiot Prayer: Alone at Alexandra Palace. As a peeping tom idea progressed in our heads, to see Nick Cave at a concert film shot at a spacious 19th-century London venue Alexander Palace came by surprise to me. A song-maker and a poet by himself in the middle of an empty room at the time of social distancing made many of his fans, which I read as feedback, feel lonely all together because Cave has the extraordinary ability to transform his feelings through his songs and music to others. Seeing him with just a piano accompanying him, I am adding this special emotional weight of his repertoire and this concert. I see his piano in the middle of an elegant empty decorated hangar. Dressed in his standard black suit, with each finger having a ring on his left hand. He scowled the lyric sheets in front of him, and tossed them on the floor, in the piles. Everything went along quite nicely with his words slowly stacked up in our mind. I have to say that most of the songs were carefully chosen for the film seemed custom-fit in one terrific way to once more seduce his audience.“Stranger Than Kindness,” “Sad Waters“ are soundtracks for misfits and his previous life to music dedications, in his way of catching shadows of comfort. In the nineties, selections focus on yearning, The Boatman’s Call, and Let Love In’s “Nobody’s Baby Now.” He debuted a new song, called with enthusiasm…lol…hmm “Euthanasia.” Over a gently skipping piano line, he sang quietly, with a slightly low voice about searching for someone he loves underneath the damp earth, in the night sky. And the rarely picked song “He Wants You,” from 2003’s Nocturama, then surrealistic lyrics in “Jubilee Street,” “Higgs Boson Blues” and then back to his grief that has defined his last two heartbreaking records, Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen. Not to mention the old one “Papa Won’t Leave You Henry” played up the story’s tragedy, followed by the dark one “Stranger Than Kindness” revealed again, the darkness, then “The Mercy Seat”…
“When you stepped out of the vehicle and attached yourself to my heart, it was a kind of dying,” he sang in only the way Nick Cave can and you could feel grief, and it felt appropriate and great because this attachment felt good. Honesty is the best policy for artists, honesty is a great policy for musicians. He gave himself to us once again, him alone, without the band, this time without all screaming fans gazing from the dark. Talking about the concert audience crowd: the hungry, widespread eyes pointed at him. Altogether, just a brilliant dark, and the deeply emotional saga of Nick Cave alone at Alexander Palace.