Nick Cave in Barcelona: atonement, catharsis and (a bit of) carnage

Death, guilt, pain and, suddenly, some light. A pinch of hope. Surprising epic of joy for someone who paraded through the 20th century as the Prince of Darkness and has entered the 21st touched and sunk. “We have all had too much pain, now is the time for joy,” Cave shouted last night, wearing an office worker’s suit and tie and a robust gospel choir covering his back, from the halfway point of his ceremony of atonement and catharsis in Barcelona. Only two years after their last exhibition at Primavera Sound but a whole world, almost another life, between one and the other.

It sounded ‘Joy’, moan of synthesizers under hurtful verses (“I woke up this morning with sadness everywhere / I felt like someone in my family had died,” the Australian said) and the audience remained almost deathly silent. The Palau Sant Jordi, it is true, was half full, but Cave and his usual cronies, the volcanic Bad Seeds, were already in charge of filling it all with piano trance and electric whips. Inflamed gospel, majestic rock in the bones and Warren Ellis’ violin piercing the flesh and skeleton of ‘O Children’.

In recent years, we have seen the Australian crowned as Attila of furious rock, piloting that concrete mixer of noise and grime that was Grinderman, and even spit out fragments of his novel ‘The Death of Bunny Munro’ alongside his faithful squire Warren Ellis. Last night, however, was different. Another thing. In some way, this tour is the consummation of that forced metamorphosis that began with ‘Skeleton Tree’ (or, for that matter, with ‘Push The Sky Away’, an album in which the Bad Seeds’ harmful electricity began to dilute) and from which Cave now emerges as a scribe of that wild God to whom he dedicates ‘Wild God’ ,

The pain, he says, has transformed him. And it shows. Another thing is that he continues to be a stage animal, pure nerve with an unmatched presence and charisma. There he was, imposing, jumping like a man possessed and watering the end of the road with gasoline. ‘Jubilee Street’ while the band mutated into a hurricane. The new and the old Nick, in mass and ringing: perched in the first rows, collapsed on the piano, and making the ardor of the soul stadium meat. The wound and the balm, the hug and the punch. The ecstasy of ‘White Elephant’ and the grime of ‘Papa Won’t Leave You Henry’.

For lifelong fans, those of chaos and carnage, the Australian reserved volcanic and menacing versions of ‘From Her To Eternity’ (what a barbaric thing) and ‘Tupelo’ (what an even more barbaric thing, with the reinforcement of the choirs and that anvil-drums). The Cave of 2024, however, must be sought in the torn beauty of ‘Long Dark Knight’ and the awestruck lament of ‘Bright Horses’. In the enchanted and epic atmosphere of ‘Cinnamon Horses’ and the soul coven of ‘Conversion’, with the singer as if in a trance repeating to the audience “you’re beautiful” over and over again. And beauty, indeed, was everywhere.

With ‘Wild God’ as a common thread – nine out of ten sounded and the full-color verses of the songs pulsed on the screens – and moments of knot in the stomach like the dark ending of ‘I Need You’, it wasn’t yesterday Cave, it isn’t anymore, the furious and prancing preacher, but an explorer of the abyss who has come to bring a little light. To turn ‘Carnage’ into a comforting balm and sing about love, always love, in ‘Final Rescue Attempt’. Also of course, to unleash a storm of aúpa with ‘Red Right Hand’, wallow in the poisonous electricity of ‘The Mercy Seat’ and send the public home with their hearts in their fists after saying goodbye alone at the piano with ‘Into My Arms’. Two and a half hours of Gospel from beyond the grave to comfort the living and remember the dead. Extraordinary.