By Cara Burke, Year 12
He leaned over our sea of faces with arms outstretched, and the music flowed from his fingertips and weaved its way around the crowd.
This is how Nick Cave’s concert on the 13th of November seemed to me, anyhow. From the perspective of someone who had been a fan for a long, long time “it was like seeing an old friend after a long time”; and from the looks on people’s faces, my friend wasn’t the only one to feel this way. The groups of people who jostled and jolted the crowd around me were a beautiful display of young and old, and every colour and style that falls between the years. Yet we seemed to move as one in appreciation for the man who sang before us. And Nick Cave accepted our appreciation; he stretched his arms out, and we reached up and touched his hands. The night seemed to stand still for a moment in this preserved pocket of time, reserved only for us, where we put aside our differences and forgot everything else and just dove into his music.
There was a level of intimacy that I’d never felt in the arena before, and Nick Cave maintained this closeness throughout. He never spent much time on stage, but rather found his setting on the platform which we pressed ourselves against. He leaned over our heads and sang above us, and he did more than simply acknowledge our presence; he sang for and with us, and looked into our eyes as he did so. He invited us to feel his heartbeat for Higgs Boson Blues. Emotion intertwined his lyrics and his voice, and hearing him live had it wrapping its way through the audience as well – no one left having not been moved in some way. He brought an electric energy to the arena that lifted it into the sky, and he brought us on a journey with him.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seed’s new album, Skeleton Tree, was the focus of this concert and their tour. Much of it was written and recorded following the tragic death of his fifteen-year-old son in July 2015. Whilst the songs carry his grief, the music in itself didn’t bring people down. He tells a narrative that carries the audience on a journey that may be morose in its own way, but people didn’t leave with a sense of depression weighing on them; in its own funny way it lifted us all up.
I think the final show of unity was at the very end of the concert, when myself and a huge group of people joined him onstage, and from the old ladies to the young dancers, every voice counted how many holes Stagger Lee placed in a barman’s head. Truly a magical end to the night.
