Photo by Ty Helbach
Nick Cave Performing
Nick Cave
In April of 1983 Chicago musician Rick Rizzo situated himself directly in front of Nick Cave’s microphone stand when The Birthday Party played Tut’s in Chicago. Rizzo recalls, “unknown to me at the time, I would be one of the fans he would drape himself over the whole show. The band was the most menacing bunch I've ever seen or hear—I left sweaty and awed. I’ve been a Nick fan ever since.”
A mere 43 years later things have not changed much. Wednesday night at the Miller High Life Theatre Cave and The Bad Seeds sneered at Father Time and performed a two-and-a-half hour, 22-song set. At times raging and other times soothing, the show benefitted from a stellar mix by the sound engineers and videos that enhanced the onstage performance.
Leaning heavily into the recent album The Wild God, songs were transformed in the live setting. As a songwriter and recording artist Cave has become a master craftsman. But his live shows remain an entirely other beast.
Backed by a ten-piece band—nearly an orchestra, the rear-stage risers were home to a quartet of gospel vocalists, Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood and drummer Larry Mullins were joined by a pair of keyboard players. Guitarist George Vjestica was joined by multi-instrumentalist and Cave’s foil Warren Ellis. When Cave wasn’t stalking the audience from the proscenium he was seated at grand piano.
Opening with “Frogs,” Cave established the scene from the gitgo. Epic and elegiac, it is a template that plays to the group’s strengths, building like the distant rumbling of thunder, just to explode again and again.
By the second song, the album’s title track, Cave moved to the proscenium where he reached and held an outstretched hand to the faithful. Testifying and roiling the audience, you wouldn’t be wrong for believing by the end of the night he’d be laying hands on the lame and they’d walk again.
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Between nearly every song Cave engaged sincerely with the audience, balancing gravitas and witty banter. “When I wrote this song I was thing of you,” he said to a fan, “I hope you don’t do what this song is about” as a lead-in to “Song of the Lake.” He characterized “O Children” as a song written years ago about our inability to protect our children, noting it resonated with his life events.
Under the weather?
Early on Cave announced Ellis was under the weather, but it didn’t stop him from leaping on a chair to theatrically conduct the band with his violin break. Other times he trafficked in sonic chaos, wielding and flailing his fiddle as feedback generator. “Long Dark Night” had him sawing a rustic violin solo and during “Carnage” he again leapt on his chair to reel off a violin solo reminiscent of the Tymon Dogg songbook.
Speaking of songbooks, Cave peppered the set with songs that have stood the test of time. The ballad “Jubilee Street” transformed into a roadhouse stomp with mic stands and piano benches flying upturned like the ghost of The Killer himself. “From Her to Eternity” worked the audience into a fervor and “Cinnamon Horses” built to a crescendo of tympani and tubular bells.
Cave’s epic “Tupelo” remains one of the best interpretations of Southern Gothic America vis-à-vis the mythology of twin brothers, stillborn Jesse Garon and Elvis Aaron Presley. The song’s bombastic stomp took flight with the gospel voices, allowing Cave’s transformation as Old Testament prophet channeling John Lee Hooker.
Cave seemingly didn’t have a problem looking in the mirror and poking fun at his body of work. A recurring theme was introducing many numbers as “This is a song about a girl,” admitting, “I’ve been writing it for 45 years.” Chanting repeatedly, “You’re beautiful—Stop!” he took himself into the audience for a lap among the great unwashed, twirling a few lucky fans.
Engine of the band
Photo by Blaine Schultz
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds performing at the Miller High Life Theatre (2025)
The engine of the band was drummer Larry Mullins whose pulse went from supple to heartbeat to bombast—all with the flick of a wrist. On “Red Right Hand” his thundering drums squared off with marimba and tubular bells. Cave’s darkly Dickensian tale ended with an Ellis’ conflagration of a violin solo and the singer falling into the crowd’s outstretched hands in a leap of faith that they would again return him to the catwalk.
Ending the set proper with “White Elephant,” the vocalists joining Cave on the proscenium and the clarion crescendo:
A time is coming, a time is nigh
For the kingdom, in the sky
Don't ask who, don't ask why
There's a kingdom in the sky
A four-song encore began with “Papa Won't Leave You, Henry,” a lullaby Cave sang to his son. “I terrified him to sleep,” he said. Appropriately closing with a solo piano version of “Into My Arms,” after a spent evening of levitation the austere ballad was a perfect soft landing.
