There were doubts about the tone of the concert that he would offer Nick Cave this Saturday, within the framework of Primavera Sound, given the recent tragedy that the singer has suffered, the death of his son Jethro, 31, on May 9, after dragging a history of mental disorders (and it rains pours: in 2015, Cave lost Arthur, 15, when he fell from a cliff). But the Australian bite the bullet and poured out all his anguish, his sorrow and his anger in a cathartic concert, true to its essence, with its most overwhelming classics and some incursions into the floating mystique of its latest albums.
Cave has always maintained that art must hurt and dig deep to be genuine, and never has he been so charged with reasons to give literal meaning to his music. Without preamble, to redemptive cry of ‘Get ready for love’, entered the scene with his horsemen of the apocalypse, the Bad Seedsreinforced by a vocal trio that accentuated the gospel tones of that piece from the album ‘Abbatoir blues / The lyre of Orpheus’ (2004), from which two other songs fell.
with physical contact
There was the preacher, reaching the hands of the attendees located in the first rows, looking for direct contact, and next to him, minions like that multitasking beast called Warren Ellis, strumming a devilish violin. Shakes from another era, like ‘From her to eternity‘, with its diabolical babble and post-punk fanfare.
The difference with respect to the Cave of other times was put by the quotations to his latest albums, in particular the supernatural ‘ghosteen‘, marked by the death of Arthur, which slipped a subtext of redoubled intimate pain. Mention for ‘bright horses‘, with startling verses (“my boy is coming home now, on the 5.30 train & rdquor;), accompanied by Ellis’s pitiful howls. And what about ‘Waiting for you’, another disconsolate piano ballad. That sequence expanded it’carnival‘, the title track of his half album with Ellis, marked by the collective trauma of the pandemic.
Beyond death
But Cave did not forget that he was in a macrofestival, and the most recognized numbers of his repertoire dominated in the second block, among the chimes from beyond the grave of ‘Red right hand’the paroxysm ‘in crescendo’ of ‘The mercy seat‘ and even a remote date, the eighties ‘Your hair‘. And that ballad on fire that answers for ‘The ship song‘. Recital of overwhelming authority, the second of this tour (which started on Thursday in Aarhus, Denmark), with which Nick Cave seemed to want to tell us that there he is, standing up to his destiny and taking his art beyond death.
If it was up to Cave to shake the ground (and even the air) of the festival by leading midnight, hours before, the same stage welcomed one of his most charismatic former accomplices, Blixa Bargeld, at the head of Einstürzende Neubauten. An intimidating artifact whose roots go back to the Berlin of 1980, a nest of avant-garde and post-punk industrial impulses. The ‘collapsing new buildings’ band modulated their extreme artistry on their latest album, ‘alles in allem‘ (2020), so that the ‘set’ gravitated around a subtle dance of electric crackles, floating environments and the narrative voice of the sinister angel Bargeld, dressed in black and with glitter on his eyelids.
industrial hardware
Session with a theatrical touch, like a dystopian Berlin cabaret, around a repertoire of solemn tones, processing signals from krautrock and concrete music and incorporating the screeching of metal plates and tubes (in ‘Zivilisatorisches missgeschick’) and the rubbing of the brush on a mechanical lathe in the ‘Sonnenbarke’, back in the “underworld”, where “light penetrates between the cracks”. The group showed that their search continues, now with more serenity, avoiding sensationalism and still trusting, in the midst of the digital age, in those venerable junkyard gadgets factories and dumps to create sequences of restless calm, as in ‘Seven screws’ and ‘How did I die?’.
The other sunset attraction put her Jorja Smith, British with a lucky star thanks to her meaty neo-soul voice and her balanced repertoire between silk and sensual rhythm. she transmitted elegance and certain conservatism, in the wake of a Sade or the first Erykah Badu, with her ‘funky’ guitars, her pianos with jazzy twists and her functional choral reinforcements. It was based on that album that still has no relief, ‘Lost & found’ (2018), with the targets of ‘Be honest’, a dynamic ‘up-tempo’ number, and an ‘On my mind’ with an acoustic prelude, as well as some quotes from last year’s epé, ‘Be right back’.
ultra modern flamingo
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And in full parade of overseas stars, a familiar moan from the south, that of Maria Jose Llergofrom Cordoba from Pozoblanco who grew up in Barcelona’s Esmuc, venturing into a recital that began with flamenco orthodoxy, attached to the guitar of Marc Lopez (traditional tangos and an attack on ‘Mira que eres linda’, evoking Machín), and which later incorporated subtle electronic plots.
Theatrical presence, with a red dress with a very wide skirt, and refined melismas to delight of fans and passers-by. His ‘Healing’ (2020) was once a bit clouded by the pandemic fog, but life goes on: there was the rescue of the popular ‘Soy como el oro’ and the song he released last year, ‘Que tú love me’. Profiles as ‘jondos’ as they are ultramodern for this Spring which still has a week to go.