Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.“You’re beautiful,” Nick Cave announced repeatedly at the O2 Arena. The line turns up as a refrain, or mantra, in “Conversion”, one of the songs on his new album Wild God. This is the next stage in the extraordinary programme of bereavement that he has orchestrated through his songs since the death of his teenage son Arthur in 2015. Skeleton Tree (2016) and Ghosteen (2019), both made with his band the Bad Seeds, were obsessively imagined expressions of grief. They depicted a state of mind in which the mourner is forced, at excruciating cost, into a more open and enlightened form of consciousness. Loss brings painful gains.Following 2021’s Carnage, a duo outing with his main songwriting partner Warren Ellis, Wild God has reunited him with the Bad Seeds. They were arranged around him on the stage, joined by four gospel singers. Ellis was at one side, variously playing violin, guitar and synthesiser. An immense profusion of grey hair emerged from his head and face, like St Jerome in his cave. Meanwhile, Cave was dapper in an immaculately tailored dark suit, with pitch-black hair swept back from his high forehead. He took on a more dishevelled look during the course of the gig, the first of two at the London venue. The tie was discarded and shirt buttons undone as he dashed back and forth between the lip of the stage and a grand piano, jettisoning his microphone en route and stooping to pick it up from the floor when returning. He sang while leaning on the upraised hands of audience members at the front, as though on the verge of going the full Iggy Pop and launching himself on to the sea of people stretching to the back of 20,000-capacity arena.Cave’s gigs are often likened to evangelical church services, with the singer in the role of possessed preacher leading his whooping flock to a higher state of being. As one of rock’s most mesmerising frontmen, he’s incapable of playing a bad gig. But this one had a more sedate feel than others I have seen.Almost every track on Wild God was played. Its songs feature more input from the Bad Seeds than the ethereal, synthesiser-led music of Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen. They had a rich, rolling sound at the O2 Arena, embellished by dual rhythms from drummer Larry Mullins and percussionist Jim Sclavunos. The gospel quartet added depth to Cave’s charismatic but narrow baritone. He summed up the evening’s tone in “Joy” when he sang: “We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy.”The words carried the weight of the singer’s multiple bereavements (his adult son Jethro, Arthur’s half-brother, died in 2022), but the redemptive message struggled to land in the large, functional space of the arena. Songs cruised along at a midtempo, with occasional switches to a higher gear. A rendition of back-catalogue classic “From Her to Eternity” came early in the set, all staccato menace and howled vocals. Its redemption came later on with new song “O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)”, a sweet, slightly chintzy tribute to “From Her to Eternity”’s co-writer Anita Lane, who died in 2021.Carnage’s “White Elephant” was a highlight, a stomping brute of a thing in which the gospel singing acquired an unhinged intensity. Fan favourites such as “The Mercy Seat” and “Red Right Hand” made appearances, played effectively but without the reckless attack of the Bad Seeds in full flow. “Into My Arms” was performed alone by Cave at his piano at the end of the set while people in the audience raised their hands like worshippers. It had a rote quality, unlike another song performed alone at the piano — Skeleton Tree’s “I Need You”, during which Cave’s eyes glistened on the big screens as he sang powerful verses about love and grief: a truly beautiful moment.★★★☆☆nickcave.com
