Nick Cave
Orpheum Theatre
October 29, 2023
By DAN MACINTOSH
LOS ANGELES, CA – Without a typical backing band, Nick Cave at the piano came off as a kind of piano man for hipsters and aging goths. Of course, he wasn’t completely alone, as he was also accompanied by Colin (Radiohead) Greenwood on bass, who added plenty of rhythmic color to the overall mix. Then again, any Cave concert is always primarily about his deeply thoughtful songs, and he sang plenty of those to his adoring fans on the last night of a 3-night stand, which was the end to his Live in North America tour.
As Cave admitted during his song introductions, many of his lyrics are complicated (to say the least). For instance, he introduced one called “Higgs Boson Blues,” as one that begins with Robert Johnson at the crossroads and ends with Myley Cyrus floating in a pool. Cave songs can be as moving as they are complex, however, as “Galleon Ship” was written — he noted — for all the fans that gave him empathetic support via their emails and messages after the recent untimely death of his son.
While Cave can be a bit of a morbid character at times, he’s also very funny. Probably only those that see him in concert realize this, though. For example, he got the audience seated in the venue’s upper regions involved in his song “Balcony Man,” encouraging them to make noise whenever he sang the song’s title line. Cave began his career as a raving, unhinged animalistic artist back when he broke away from his band The Birthday Party, but has evolved into one of today’s best ballad writers and singers. The audience gladly and willingly sang along with the spiritually deep “Into My Arms,” for example, which may be his best song of all.
Without a band, the audience had a chance to better understand and appreciate Cave’s smart lyrics tonight. So, even though “The Mercy Seat” (an older one) may have lacked some of the sonic momentum created the original band rendition, this evening the listener could much more easily comprehend the various spiritual challenges of his character in this song.
This stripped-down arrangement, in fact, may be the best way to experience Cave music. His songs are just so engaging, this setting presents them in their sparse, purest and rawest power. Unlike that more famous piano man (Billy Joel), Cave had us feeling much more than just alright. Rather, he did that and then some, as he also caused us to experience a much wider range of emotions. Furthermore, tonight we were able to see close-up those very good seeds of his Bad Seeds songs.
