Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds have made a thunderous return to Australian stages, delivering an electrifying performance to a 10,000-strong crowd at Fremantle Park in Perth. This January show marks the band's first tour down under in nine years, powerfully showcasing material from their 2024 album, Wild God.
A Preacher's Return to the Pulpit
From the opening moments, the atmosphere was charged. Dragging his hand across the piano keys, Nick Cave leapt into the air and charged towards the crowd with the fervour of a preacher breaking from the pulpit. The set opened with the brooding 'Frogs' and the explosive title track 'Wild God', a crescendo of high-pitched strings and pounding percussion that immediately commanded the audience's devotion.
At 68, Cave's stage presence remains formidable. Dressed in a slick black suit, he engaged in sardonic banter, quipping to a fan who said he looked fantastic, "Actually, I look like a Mormon." This moment of self-recognition hints at the deeper themes explored in the 'Wild God' album and throughout the night—a meditation on faith forged through personal suffering, following the tragic deaths of his sons, Arthur and Jethro.
A Set Spanning Four Decades of Fury and Fragility
The tour is the band's first Australian visit since 2017, concluding an introspective period that yielded the albums Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen. For this grand return, Cave was joined by a formidable ensemble including long-time collaborator Warren Ellis, Jim Sclavunos, George Vjestica, Larry Mullins, Colin Greenwood, Carly Paradis, and a four-person gospel choir.
Over a generous two-and-a-half-hour set, the band masterfully wove new material with songs from across Cave's four-decade career. He introduced 2004's 'O Children' as an ancient song "coming to you with a fucking Zimmer frame," its gospel-tinged plea swelling with urgency. The classic 'Tupelo' from 1985 ignited the park, with Cave leading a call-and-response and miming rocking a baby, a nod to the song's mythic tale of Elvis Presley's birth.
Staging That Amplified the Emotion
The production design intensified the experience. A narrow runway pulled Cave deep into the audience, while banks of lights flashed in gold, green, and red. Lyrics from the songs blazed across screens in stark, debossed lettering, mirroring the Wild God album artwork and visually underscoring themes of love, pain, and amazement.
The emotional core of the night arrived with 'Bright Horses' from 2019, a song widely understood as a response to his son Arthur's death. Cave introduced it simply: "This is a very beautiful song … this one just poured out of me." Live, it was devastating, his voice steady but fragile. This was starkly contrasted by the new track 'Joy', its central refrain—"we’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy"—offering a glimpse of hard-won light.
An Encore of Candid Beauty and Collective Hope
Following rapturous applause, the band returned for a five-song encore. Cave introduced 'Skeleton Tree' with quiet candour, explaining he had packed the song away after writing it in the immediate aftermath of his son's death, only to later discover "a beauty I could not begin to see back then."
The night concluded with Cave alone at the piano for 'Into My Arms'. As he sang the plainspoken doubts—"I don’t believe in the existence of angels. But looking at you I wonder if that’s true"—he called on the crowd to join him for the final lines. It was a prescient and powerful end: a decades-old song framing faith not as certainty, but as a provisional, relational act shaped by love, loss, and fragile hope.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' Wild God tour continues through January and February with performances in Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne.
