Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Conflicts are, naturally, a part of any festival, but Bonnaroo just got cruel on Saturday night. After Jack White had a big two hour chunk all to himself for an endless barrage of cartoonish classic rock-isms and faux-folksy-mystic banter, right afterwards you had the irreconcilable: Nick Cave vs. the Flaming Lips vs. Frank Ocean. Cave’s Push The Sky Away was a late-breaking favorite of mine last year, but I was still on the fence. The Flaming Lips have had some embarrassing and tiring moments as of late, and they’re never really not on tour, but their current stage setup is such an entrancing spectacle that I was eager to see it again. Frank Ocean is, of course, Frank Ocean — even if I wasn’t as into channelORANGE as many others, he feels like a person that you shouldn’t miss out on. And as much as I liked Push The Sky Away, I wasn’t sure if it was the kind of material that’d translate incredibly well to a late night set at Bonnaroo. Nick Cave is a legend, though, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

This was the best decision I’ve made in a long time, and it took me about a song and a half to realize that. With White’s set running way long over on the What Stage, Cave came out to a thin gathering (though it’d slowly grow over time), and immediately commented on it: “There’s not that many people here,” before putting a semi-positive spin on it. “We have the cream of the crop. Fuck those other motherfuckers!” and then, sardonically, “We’re going to do this quickly so we can go see Skrillex.” My moment of clarity followed soon after, during the set’s second song — a scorching rendition of Push The Sky Away highlight “Jubilee Street.” That’s one of my favorite songs to walk around listening to in New York, due to the gorgeous and methodical way it builds. Live, it’s something entirely different, unleashed into faster and harder territory than Cave ever allowed on his last record. Cave took the final lines of the studio version and repeated them over and over into a hypnotic mantra — “I’m transforming, I’m vibrating, look at me now!” he roared, somehow grasping at a new intensity with each time. With some distance from the night itself, I’m now pretty sure it was one of the most incredible things I’ve seen anyone do in concert, ever. And this was the second song in.

Cave spent much of the set standing directly over the crowd’s heads, balancing on a small walkway from the stage and the edge of the barricade. He looked like a man possessed, his hair lank and eyes furious and distant, sweat pouring from his body, and sounds practically inhuman emitted from his wraithlike form. He and the Bad Seeds were raising some dark spirits of Americana that night — that line in “Higgs Boson Blues” about Miley Cyrus floating in a pool was doubly haunting when flanked by older songs boiling with rage and catharsis. The dude isn’t even American and he does the whole elemental dark American poet thing in a way that made Jack White’s earlier shtick look all the more embarrassing.

Periodically — or, really, throughout — Cave was overcome. He let himself fall onto the outstretched hands of those directly in front of him. He convulsed. Every now and then, he did this seductively evil come-hither motion with his hand, beckoning the most diehard fans closer and closer to the stage, closer into his orbit. It was the middle of the night, and he owned the space, even when distant strains of Skrillex’s superjam crept through the quieter moments. I’ve rarely seen a performer this extreme, this overwhelming. This wasn’t exactly a rock show. It was an act of sorcery.