Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Corn Exchange, Edinburgh 26/11/08

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An eerie wreath of religion has coiled its way around Auld Reekie this evening. From the foreboding storm clouds congregating over the Edinburgh skyline to the 1,000 or so punters descending upon The Corn Exchange like a plague of ravenous locusts, there’s the distinct feeling that something biblical is about to unfold. And that ‘something’? Well, it’s a man whose self-penned psalms are greeted like heavenly scriptures, a man whose backing band of music making disciples are revered across the globe. It is, of course, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

As this rickety Newmarket Road Chapel fills to the rafters with a smorgasbord of worshipping Caveites, an anticipatory rustle of hand meeting hand welcomes the (un)fortunate swines selected to warm the hall’s cockles before communion begins. The vagabonds in question are London-based brother/sister combo Joe Gideon & The Shark and tonight they’re nervous. Very nervous.

There’s no doubting the duo’s rambunctious clatter of drum and strum befits their status as possible 2009 hitlisters but when face to face with the baying Cave masses a coyish stage fright tempers their dowdy opener number. Thankfully, ‘Johan Was A Painter And Arsonist’ exorcises these demons, with Gideon’s ragged crow conceding to a thrilling tidal wave of bromidic riffage, and all of a sudden the airwaves are besieged by rapacious, frothing sonics.

Armed with a slew of post-apocalyptic, Fall-like dirges, Gideon and Viva (a girl whose elasticised limb flinging render her the drum-pummelling incarnation of Kate Bush) are transformed into an electro-shock of punked-up Blues swagger. Night highlight is the hedge-draggled ‘Hide & Seek’ – a demonic trainwreck that sets out with looping key flickers before exploding into a maelstrom of percussion and barbarous staccato – and once the pair exit from stage a previously stoic crowd stands defeated; eyes peeled, jaws agape.

With eardrums perforated and subsequently soothed by the baritonal drawl of Johnny Cash oozing from the PA, so seismic is the shudder that greets the Bad Seeds’ arrival it could jilt life back into Edinburgh’s extinct volcanic rock. And by the time the moustachioed one nonchalantly ventures out into the fore – immaculately attired in black suit and white high-collared shirt, hair slicked hurriedly back – the air scorches with such ferocity the venue may as well be atop a bubbling chamber of molten lava.

Yet opener ‘Hold On To Yourself’ belies such fervent expectancy, with the slow waltzing entanglement of Warren Ellis’ electric mandolin and Mick Harvey’s sliding country bars exuding limply from stage. Even Cave appears dishevelled; awkwardly contorting his string bean frame with Frankensteinal grace as follow-up number ‘Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!’ attempts to cut its predecessor’s losses with a tirade of throttling guitar that swarms round Jim Sclavunos’ feral skin propulsions.

It’s not until ‘Tupelo”s thunderous chant that this insatiable mutt of a group unfastens the muzzle and bares it’s gleaming gnashers, paralysing the audience’s solar plexus’ with an anaesthetising bassline cajoled by Cave’s fearful, tremulous wail. From here, “Classic Cave” cuts like ‘Weeping Song’, ‘Red Right Hand’ and the spine tingling ‘Mercy Seat’ restore the natural order; Cave seamlessly alternating between prowling letch and sentimental bard while his henchmen wrestle sound like wolves do their prey.

For all this misty-eyed reminiscing, the chromatic grooves of the Lazarus-extracted cuts are an insipid, un-affecting chore. Granted, ‘We Call Upon the Author’ is cranked up with serrated guitar crunch and boisterous chant but when indie kid hips start gyrating to ‘Midnight Man’ like The Wu Tang – and not God – is in the house, credence is added to the notion that Cave’s arrival at the pantheon of greatness has afforded him a little creative leeway.

And that’s not the Nick Cave we all know.

He’s the artist who screams ‘fuck you’ at ambivalence while pinning it to the wall, meat-cleaver between balls. He’s the artist who tortures ear-caveats with a screeching sermon of exhilarating, animalistic Blues. Christ, even here in this very building, he’s the artist who can run heart-surgeons ragged with the pulse-stopping fortitude of ‘Papa Won’t Leave You Henry’.

Yet, for much of tonight he seems like an artist happy to bask in the accolades; happy to whip out the collection and take your £35; happy to do the minimum possible to keep you believing.

I guess there really was something religious happening here after all.

Photos by Su Anderson

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds on MySpace
Joe Gideon & The Shark on MySpace