The performance ends quietly with a tenderly stoical Black Hair and a sparse, elegiac Galleon Ship, which, without the otherworldly electronic atmospherics of the Ghosteen version, sound even more affecting. Things shift gear towards the end, first with a dramatic Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry, a slice of southern gothic that will please those longtime fans who - to paraphrase Cave’s friend Shane MacGowan – wish he would head back into the swamp more often. Likewise, a pared-to-the-bone Higgs Boson Blues retains its surreal, disorienting momentum against all the odds. Jubilee Street, while not possessing the spiralling momentum of the band version, is nevertheless dramatic, Cave pounding on the keys as if willing it towards its dizzying conclusion. Euthanasia, a track that did not make it on to Skeleton Tree, debuted here, summons up the spirit of the young Van Morrison in its incantatory vocal repetitions.Īs the performance unfolds, you sense Cave settling into the songs, inhabiting them entirely as if immersed in his own private space. Girl in Amber, stripped of the electronically treated voices, becomes a very different song, Cave’s emphatic delivery imbuing it with an even more visceral sense of grief and isolation. More intriguing, though, are his deft readings of more recent songs from the album trilogy of Push the Sky Away, Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen, many of which forgo the traditional narrative form for an almost stream-of-consciousness lyricism tied to often dissonant sonic settings. Both songs feature here, the former even more regretful than the original, the latter restrained and haunting until it builds slowly into something more chilling. Then, a quietly reverent Brompton Oratory gives way to the extravagant lyricism of Grinderman’s Palaces of Montezuma, one of several dramatic juxtapositions that highlight the range of Cave’s extensive back catalogue.Īs we know from past outings, Cave’s ballads, whether a lovelorn cri de coeur such as Far From Me or a feverish death song such as The Mercy Seat, tend to work equally well in a solo piano setting. A haunting Sad Waters from 1986’s Your Funeral, My Trial, sounded almost elegiac in this starker setting. The setlist leans heavily on The Boatman’s Call, his most contemplative album, but there are also several surprises.
After that, for the next hour and 30 minutes, it’s all about the songs and Cave’s commanding presence, by turns dramatic and quietly transfixing.
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