I had taken a break from Nick Cave after his personal tragedies and subsequently sad songs and very boring musical output. Back when I last went to see Nick Cave live, he used to play in 2-3000 capacity venues. For some completely unexplainable reasons he now plays in 15.000 capacity venues. I guess it must have to do with money, because it can't possible have anything to do with any artistic reasons.
HEY HEY HEY - You're Beautiful - STOP!!!
I was quite certain that Nick Cave wouldn't work in a cold huge arena. What used to make Nick Cave so great live was the intimacy and the crowd interaction. Sadly I must say I had predicted it 100% correctly. Last night's Nick Cave gig sucked on so many levels. Let me mention some of them below.
Nick Cave needs to feed from the crowd interaction. It is a ping-pong game. It might still have been a great experience for the 5 first rows last night, but if you were further away from the scene than that, then there was no connection at all. Nick Cave just doesn't work in huge arenas.
The sound was god awfully bad last night. It was just as bad as in the old dreaded Valby-Hallen. I have heard fairly good sound in Royal Arena, so it is actually possible, but last night was a sound disaster and everyone involved with the sound setup should be fired.
The Bad Seeds' sound is huge and complex in itself, but combined with a 4-piece gospel choir it is simply massive. Everything sounded like distorted mud and noise every time the band kicked in fully. It didn't help that Nick's voice sounded strained and worn down, although parts of the reason could have been the overall shitty sound of the whole thing.
The setlist didn't work for an arena gig. I actually like the new album "Wild God" [2024]. It is not Cave's best album, far from it, but it does have some pretty enjoyable tunes on it.
An Arena gig is a different monster though. You cannot play for 2 and a half hours and then have a setlist that is 50% based on new rather quiet songs. It is suicide and it falls flat and crashes to the arena floor. It certainly didn't help that the setlist also included 2 sub-par Cave/Ellis tunes and one of the most boring songs from the Grinderman output.
Highlights then? Not many to be honest. Warren Ellis had some fine interactions on his violin through the mud. I wanted to love "O Children", "Jubilee Street" and "Conversion", but the shitty sound made that almost impossible.
"O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)" was a beautiful tribute to Anita Lane and it worked well live with the old videos on the big screens. It was actually quite touching. Sadly the shitty sound distorted Anita's recorded voice completely. Last encore "Into My Arms" worked well, because it was piano only and it made the sound a lot better than the previous full-band sound.
My ticket had cost 843 kroner. It is a ridiculous amount for something that sounded so bad. Lesson learned, no reason to ever again buy a ticket for a Nick Cave arena gig. Too bad though, I already have a ticket for one of his arena gigs in London next Month. I might skip that one though. I am not sure I am willing to go through this sound torture again.
Rating: 
Band: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Venue: Royal Arena, Copenhagen, DK
Concert Date: 2024-10-05
Support Band: Dry Cleaning
Setlist:
- Frogs
- Wild God
- Song of the Lake
- O Children
- Jubilee Street
- From Her to Eternity
- Long Dark Night
- Cinnamon Horses
- Tupelo
- Conversion
- Bright Horses
- Joy
- I Need You
- Carnage [Cover: Cave / Ellis]
- Final Rescue Attempt
- Red Right Hand
- The Mercy Seat
- White Elephant [Cover: Cave / Ellis]
Encore:
Encore 1:
- Palaces of Montezuma [Cover: Grinderman]
- O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)
- The Weeping Song
Encore 2:
Ticket Price (DKK): 843
Ticket Provider: Ticketmaster
Content Type: Concert Review
Language: 
Updated: 2024-10-06 16:02
Created: 2024-03-15 16:26
Links:
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