"What do we know of the dead and who actually cares?" Nick Care inquired back in 2008, and it is the all purpose catechism, the death and religion as ecstatic parallel for love might well ask. The song is a great one but the question isn't, it just embraces its own theological shell game. It winks too hard at myth over faith.
And there is Nick Cave's problem. He is like a Met fan who will only go to Yankee games. And at Beacon Theater on a tour that Alyson Camus called " the sort of rare performance that gives you chills along the spine for close to 2 hours" when she reviewed it in L.A. earlier this year, Nick was an agitated rock and roller who failed to signify. The man couldn't walk down the street without a fetus on a leash and Lucifer snapping at his ankles. With the Bad Seeds, a first rate blues and garage rock band, plus a choir and a string section, he was like Oz's Scarecrow with feathery dyed black hair and eyeliner, a sharp gray suit and commanding stage presence, he sang some six songs off the new album and dipped deep into his catalog, but if he only had a heart.
The problem is the newbie Push The Sky Away is not a great album, the one before it, Dig, Lazarus, Dig, was much better and the concert at the Theatre At MSG to push Lazarus was better if only because the songs were stronger. "Mermaids" with Harlem Voices (a children's choir) singing back up, was so terrible last night, with its ridiculous opening couplet "She was a catch, we were a match, I was the fire that lit up her snatch" it was the worst I've ever seen him. And with the exception of "Higgs Bolson Blues" nothing off the new album was so spectacular though they were well played and well performed.
And well danced. I just saw Taylor Swift on Wednesday and she can't move but Cave sure can. He is an explosion of hips and sprawled spindley legs on stage, relentless working the front from one end to another. He had the audience join him, extendended himself to them, holding hands or putting their hands on his heart to feel it beat. Dripping with sweat, he acted up and acted out his stories and delivered them with a raw sweet punch. Everything he does is just excellent on stage. It mixes arrogance with a very odd sweetness and it transforms the material time after time.
But he is hiding because in the end, Cave is playing make believe. When the Christian Minister Robert Watkins wrote "That's The Way We Get Along", his retelling of the parable of the Prodigal Son, it is a redemptive blues with no meaning other than that which appears. When the Stones covered it, Jagger's calm sneer made the Son indifferent to his redemption and it became a metaphor for Mick's sexual coldness. But Nick can never do that because he doesn't want to be a fool. He never lets down his emotional guard. If he had faith, his images wouldn't be so consistently stupid but instead he can't stop winking us, can't stop implying deep in his bones and right on the surface, no he doesn't BELIEVE these are anything but atmospheric metaphors.
On stage, Nick is selling snake oil and we are buying it. An astounding "Stagger Lee" is definitive, with a superb bass line and an added verse which finally ends it the way it should be ended: "In come the devil said I've come to take you, those were the last words the devil ever said because Stagger Lee put four bullets in his mother fucking head". This is a violent song and a bloody and very very good denouement and one of the best moments at a concert this year.
And there were many great moments. A beautiful "People Ain't No Good", one of exceedingly few quieter moments (the other piano ballad was an excellent "Love Letters") , made up for him not playing "Into My Arms", "Red Right Hand" was, not for the first time, everything Cave promises his audience come to life, 1992's "Papa Won't Leave You Henry" is a fan favorite and given a vicious work out. Personal best might have been the garage atonality "From Her To Eternity".
But I can't fall into Cave's vision, I can't suspend disbelief which is precisely what he requires because Cave can't suspend disbelief, every mermaid has its caveat, every angel isn't really an angel. He is selling us stories and the stories lack a dimension. If what Cave wants to be is a boogie man, if want he wants to do is jump out of a closet and shout boo, well, there is artistry in that but not if it portends. In order for these songs to have a deeper inner life they must mean more than cool The Power Of Myths mixed with the Grimm brothers. If they don't, that doesn't make Nick Cave close to being a bad, in many ways he remains a great, rock star. It just makes him shallow.
Grade: B+
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