Cave certainly did not hide his disdain for the layout of the venue...
-Nick Cave on the DAR "this place is annoying"
Well I will say that it was a fantastic show from start to finish for me.
K8 was right Jubilee Street was really powerful, in fact a lot of the songs from Push Away were phenomenally better than the album versions.
I don't know if I would characterize Cave as lusty, but the man can just render about any emotion on cue. Love, distain, anger, sympathy, bravado, spirituality, humor, madness, joy and yes even lust. He really is so much more than an indie rock star, but a performer who creates characters and stories that you can just walk into and shake their hands. There are few people in rock that are doing that as expertly as Nick does.
He does love getting out in the crowd and connecting with the fans. I don't know if is because IMP is involved with the shows at the DAR, but things are different there on nights IMP puts a show on. I don't think you were ever allowed to bring drinks inside the theater, but now you can
. I think the fans in the isles is the same thing. Before the show even started the isles in the front were filling up I was really happy with the tickets I got from the early presale. I didn't have front row and I could see being annoyed if I had gotten some and then all these other people who got cheap seats came down and stood in front of me. But I think yada said it before...seats have no place at a rock show. I wonder how hard it would be to remove the first 20 rows of seats and make a GA section?
Warren Ellis was really fun to watch , jumping around like a banshee. At one point he threw his bow up and nailed the lights overhead and almost impaled the bassist.
What I really liked is how they took songs from the albums and really fleshed them out in the context of the set. The build ups and crescendos, rocking out in the mayhem of a song like Right Red Hand into the quietness of Mermaids. At some points Nick would whisper and the audience was silent.
Mid set he put in a lot of the slow ballads West Country Girl -> Into My Arms -> People Ain't No Good -> God Is in the House -> The Weeping Song -> Higgs Boson Blues but then got everyone riled up with a killer Mercy Seat - > Stagger Lee. Stagger was awesome too as he stretched out and even added a new little call and response as well as an additional verse of Stag putting 4 holes in the Devils m-f'n head.
Push away the sky was kind of a let down after Stag, but jez can't even believe I'm complaining about that.
Encore was top notch too... Just nailed Deanna and made my night.
They said their goodbyes and were walking off the stage and Nick looked at the crowd "you want one more don't ya?" well of course the crowd responded appropriately and they played a rousing Lyre of Orpheus
I have always put the NC&BS show at the 9:30 on the MB tour as one of my top 5 shows ever...this one was on par with that. Bucket list performance