Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Glasgow review: 'firing on all cylinders'

Nick Cave | Craig McConnell / @catchinglightphotography

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Hydro, Glasgow ★★★★

Several eventful years have passed since this itinerant preacher last summoned his flock to this particular church but Glasgow was ready once more to touch the hem of Nick Cave’s garment, or at least to proffer hankies and scarves and other absorbent material to mop his fevered brow.

Cave ministered to the acolytes in the front rows throughout this epic two hour-plus sermon, but he also preached to the “balcony people” with the backing of some fantastic musicians (including Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood on this outing) and four stunning backing singers who sounded like a mighty gospel choir.

There was much fresh material to share, including pandemic collaborations with grizzled wingman Warren Ellis and the exultant new album Wild God, with the Bad Seeds firing on all cylinders for the testifying title track and the show-stopping centrepiece Conversion, a song one suspects is just at the start of a long love affair with the Cave fanbase.

Could Cave also be enjoying an equine phase, with Cinnamon Horses now cantering alongside Bright Horses? Other themes abide. Not for the last time, he introduced “a song about a girl”, going right back to the start of his career with From Her to Eternity, a coiled spring with jagged soulful interjections from the choir.

Tupelo, from around the same period, was a torrid gothic eruption, while the full force of the Bad Seeds was applied to Jubilee Street, a song that turns the screws tighter until the whole thing burst wide open into frenzied rock ecstasy.

The Hydro stage capacity allowed for an ample percussive set-up, and those chime bars were in full effect on the apocalyptic singalong Red Right Hand, but Cave alone at the piano on the plaintive likes of I Need You was just as potent as the righteous rabble-rousing of The Mercy Seat.