He's a god, he's a man, he's a ghost, he's a guru

Me? On a night out at the weekend?!?

I can't claim to be Nick Cave's biggest fan (I found most of his earlier stuff to be annoyingly obtuse) but I didn't mind Wild God, his latest album and the reviews of this tour have said some very nice things about him, so when work gave me a chance to use my favourite sentence ("I'm on the guest list") I thought I'd make a rare trip into London on a Saturday night to see what all the fuss was about. The guest list must have been massive because the lady in the box office looked like she had a couple of hundred envelopes to search through, but after a mild panic on my part she tracked mine down which meant I was back in the O2 for only the third time this year.

Before we got to see Nick though, we had the support act - Black Country, New Road. I knew I'd listened to their debut album and didn't particularly like it, but I was interested to see what their live performance was like. And well, it was completely different from their debut album, so much so that I checked out their second album afterwards - and it was pretty different from that as well. Their recorded stuff mostly has a kinda "spoken word" vocal by Tyler Head, their male bassist but during this performance most of the vocals were provided by Georgie Ellery and May Kershaw, their female mandolin (yes, seriously) and keyboard players - often with some gorgeous First Aid Kit style harmonies. It was all very whimsical and resonant of Arcade Fire - and I really liked it. There's also no doubt they're all super-talented with lots of instrument changing going on - at one point four members of the band put down their usual instruments and picked up bass recorders and played a really quite complex number beautifully. 

There was also an interesting point where an audience member was taken ill during the crescendo of one of their songs and, to their credit, they were very quick to stop everything and ensure that assistance made it to where it was required. And then, when all was sorted, they all (without any obvious interaction) just picked up at the exact same point where they had stopped and completed the song - very impressive indeed. I would say that inter-song banter is definitely not their thing, but Nick Cave gave them a decent length set for a support act and they went down well - they'd be great on a sunny Sunday afternoon at a festival. If you're intrigued because you think you don't like them, then check out the live album they released last year because it's much closer to what I heard live than anything else I've found of theirs.

After a break of twenty minutes for the hall (and quite a few pint glasses) to fill up, the lights went down and Nick and friends arrived on stage in front of a VERY expectant crowd - and proceeded to thoroughly entertain us for the next 2.5 hours. There weren't all that many of them on stage but they made an absolute wall of sound - Nick's incredibly deep voice worked really well along with four gospel style backing singers and in a lot of ways it felt more like a spiritual experience than a concert.

And the audience responded in a similar fashion - those down at the front of the standing section seemed to be in a state of religious fervour, desperate for Nick to lay his hands on them whilst the rest of us appeared more awestruck by the events unfolding in front of us. It really didn't hurt that Nick sounds a lot like you'd imagine God might and Warren Ellis looks a lot like you'd imagine he might (albeit a slightly mad God) - they make quite the pair! 

I can't claim I know many Nick songs but ones I particularly enjoyed (with a little bit of help from Google) were "O Children" which was quite emotional given two of his children have died reasonably recently, "Red Right Hand" was very powerful (and quite mad), "The Mercy Seat" which I really liked and "The Weeping Song" which was surprisingly sing-along. And, of course, who doesn't love "Into My Arms", starting as it does with the classic lyrics "I don’t believe in an interventionist God - but I know, darling, that you do". He really made us work for the encores though - much cheering was required before they returned!

The band were great - Warren Ellis appears to be more than a little bonkers, but there's no denying the man's skill on the violin (and he made some nice keyboard based sounds as well). Also in the band was Colin Greenwood ("stolen from Radiohead") which resulted in some amusing banter aimed at a guy in the front row wearing a Radiohead hoodie. Everyone else was also great, but Carly Paradis gets a name-check for some excellent whistling - there are plenty of things I'd never attempt live, but I suspect whistling would come pretty high on that list (and there was also some fine examples in BCNR's set as well)

If I had to quibble, I'd suggest that a lot of the songs went on far longer than they strictly needed to, but somehow they seemed to get away with it by introducing an unexpected change at some point to distract me - there were also quite very interesting uses of discord on several occasions, so you never quite knew what was going to happen next. One other complaint, which I'm pretty certain can't be pinned on the band - where I was sitting was absolutely FREEZING, so I was very glad I had my hat, coat and scarf handy!

And one last curious matter to discuss - why did so many people leave at 10pm (almost on the dot)? Having to catch the last train home seems to be the only valid reason, but it seems a bit early for that and it means they missed a whole hour of the set.  I'm intrigued...

All in all, this was a great night out with an unexpectedly enjoyable support act and an incredibly impressive main act giving an adoring audience exactly what they wanted. I felt very lucky to have been given the opportunity to experience it because it was definitely the gig of the year for me so far - I loved it.