Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at Coachella 2013. (Rodrigo Pena/Freelance Photographer)
Nick Cave was one of the hardest working men on the stages of the 2013 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
On Friday night, he played with side project Grinderman and then on Sunday Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds performed the penultimate set on the Coachella Stage.
It was moody, creepy and will probably haunt my dreams, but it was also a great bookend to the weekend, a look at the seedy underbelly beneath the Tesla coils and the iridescent snail traveling the grounds of the Empire Polo Club.
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I started my day with the Gregorian chant meets metal band Ghost B.C. and I thought that the underworld demons might have been awoken. Turns out they had and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were bringing them out to play.
In what might have been the least likely special guests of the fest, Cave had a strings section for the set and a chorus of children join him.
“Hi kids,” he cheerfully said to them on stage before beginning the lurching “Jubilee Street,” a song in which the main character is a prostitute, as the set’s opener.
And it just got darker from there.
“From Her to Eternity” saw Cave in the small but appreciative crowd at the main stage (everyone seemed to be waiting for the Wu-Tang Clan on the Outdoor Theatre–it was packed nearly all the way to the Do Lab) and that led into “Red Right Hand,” one of Cave’s most beloved dark, twisted fantasies.
And it’s about Satan. (See what I mentioned above about Ghost B.C. unleashing the underworld.)
The darkness continued, with the uptempo “Deanna,” the moody “Jack the Ripper” and Cave’s profanity laden tale of “Stagger Lee.”
If you love darkness, he is definitely worth catching weekend two.