You can only imagine what it takes to get through a Bad Seeds audition. Trainers are out, obviously, but resemblance to a Peckinpah extra is pretty much vital. As is a sharp suit and natty shirt. But most of all you'd require the ability to remain calm and suitably stern-faced under pressure (or at least when the Prince of Darkness directs a flailing high kick around your ears). Pop Idol would be a cinch by comparison.
Tonight Nick Cave is in imperious form. With what's generally considered his best work in years to promote, he dedicates the first hour and a half of tonight's performance to the extraordinary new double album "Abattoir Blues" and "The Lyre of Orpheus".
And he does it with an elemental combination of malevolence and humour - indeed, where the malevolence and the humour end is so uncertain that even when he's humorous he's also malevolent and vice versa. (For anyone who doesn't believe that Cave does humour, the "Lyre of Orpheus" tea towels are on sale in the lobby.) You wouldn't take your eyes off him for a second.
Stick thin, threatening and possessed he commands the stage like a demented preacher - raging at the crowd, his band and the backing singers and looking for all the world like Rolf De Heer's Bad Boy Bubby.
Not that you'd accuse him of pantomime, or even dare to - the rumbling storm of "Hiding All The Way" with it's ominous hook… "there's a war coming," is about as prescient as you can get, while the likes of "Messiah Ward", "Get Ready For Love" and "Easy Money" all stand their ground among his impressive backpages.
If anything, the pantomime - or rather the musical - came earlier on during Mercury Rev's support slot. Still looking like a band waiting for a Tim Burton movie, they previewed tracks from their forthcoming new album including "In A Funny Way" which, with it's Spector-ish drumming and dizzyingly uplifting tune, sounded the equal of anything from "Deserter's Songs".
But, with Cave flailing before us, the Rev are soon but a distant memory. For a second set we get a dip into his past riches that switches from a brooding "Red Right Hand" to the twisted cabaret of "Deanna" and from the murderous boasts of "Stagger Lee" to the holy hush of "God Is In The House".
And the best is still to come with an awesome rendition of "The Mercy Seat" that sees Cave reign fire and brimstone upon us in that damned tale of a sinner's passage to Death Row. To watch the Bad Seeds play this song is to witness one of music's higher pleasures.
This was one of the greatest gigs LAUNCH has ever witnessed. Can anybody touch this band right now?
