For those lucky enough to witness Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Live God tour, this album will feel like a perfect tour memento, a stunning testament capturing the show as a kind of semi-religious roaming revival meeting rather than a standard rock set. The tour saw Cave and the band play to some of their biggest audiences during a lengthy tour, which is still continuing. Compared to the 1993 Live Seeds album, we see that Cave has become, whether he and we like it or not, a mainstream artist whose stature has grown with him, but one who has held onto the ferocious intensity that defined his early decades.
The sequencing of the set is quietly brilliant. Early in the set, Cave and the Seeds lean into narrative-heavy pieces and slow‑burners, allowing tension and anticipation to build, before diving into a mid‑section of bruised balladry where the pace loosens and the record breathes. It is here that the years of loss and reflection hang heaviest on tracks like ‘I Need You’ before the band gather pace for a closing exultant final act, moving from desperate prayer to something like affirmation. Across its cut-down eighteen tracks, you can hear Cave and his loyal band turn arenas into chapels, sheer conviction, silence and an onslaught of noise as almost biblical tools.
On further listening, it is noticeable how present the crowd is in the mix. Rather than being relegated to background roar, the audience seems high in the mix, particularly on tracks like ’Into My Arms’ with its call‑and‑response chorus, answering Cave’s preacher-like cries. Many of the new songs build on surging choirs and melodies that strain for the rafters, and here they finally inhabit the scale they appear to be written for. When older songs arrive, like ‘Papa, Wont Leave You, Henry’, they don’t sound nostalgic but more like building blocks for Cave to build a lasting legacy upon.
Crucially, Cave’s performance is captured with just enough balance between being polished and being rough. On tracks like ‘Tupelo’, the Bad Seeds sound huge and detailed, yet there is a sense throughout that the entire thing might tip into chaos at any point – and at times it does. Warren Ellis’s textural sorcery, the muscular but unshowy rhythm section and the gospel‑inflected backing vocals all work in service of Cave’s voice. While the set includes familiar tracks like ‘Red Right Hand’ and ‘From Her To Eternity’, several staples, most notably ‘The Mercy Seat’ and ‘The Weeping Song’ are absent from this double album. But this feels OK, allowing more of a focus on Cave’s more recent run of deeply confessional albums, particularly the rather excellent Wild God album.
For those just joining Cave’s 40-plus-year career, this record is an excellent introduction, whilst for those who have travelled the path with him, they will find something new, yet familiar. With at least one final UK show to come, next summer’s Preston Park in Brighton, there is still a chance that for those who the album isn’t quite enough, can get one last opportunity, on this tour, to catch a true master delivering his spellbinding effect over the audience. For the rest of us this is a live album that deserves attention, and volume!
