The prospect of an intimate evening with Nick Cave might fill some folk with fear, but Irish fans of the angst-ridden Anti-podean were not afraid to make the journey to the dark side of Cave's soul. In fact, demand was so heavy that Cave had to do an extra matinee show at the Gaiety on Sunday afternoon - not your usual panto fare at all.
On Sunday night, Australian band The Dirty Three opened the evening with some aching, strained violin courtesy of the band's lynchpin, Warren Ellis. The instrumental trio's aim is wordlessly to articulate that same sense of longing which runs through Cave's lyrics, and they built up the tension and emotion through some extended, neo-psychedelic jams. Irish seannos singer Iarla O Lionard provided a lilting interlude, but it was Cave's violent piano chords and snarling vocals on West Country Girl which hit the emotional solar plexus.
Cave delivered a lecture on "The Secret Life of the Love Song", speaking of saudade, the longing in the soul, and duende, the mysterious power, and citing Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison and Neil Young as possessors of these twin gifts. Since many of us would speak Cave's name in the same breath as these legends of songwriting, we can only surmise that ol' Nick knows what he is talking about.
Lecture ended, Cave settled down to prove his own abundance of duende, performing songs such as Far From Me, The Mercy Seat, Do You Love Me? and Into My Arms, aided by Warren Ellis on violin and accordion, bass player Susan Stenger, and Dirty Three drummer Jim White. It felt as though Nick Cave had flipped through the secret files of our souls, read out some of the shameful bits, then tossed the sheets away on a breeze of musical absolution.
