Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ only advertised UK live performance of 2026, a show in Brighton’s Preston Park, arrives with other events across the city attached. The Duke of York’s Picturehouse cinema is hosting a weekend-long Nick Cave takeover, featuring films curated and introduced by the singer-songwriter. There is a pop-up shop replete with exclusive merchandise, and a postbox where physical letters can be sent to The Red Hand Files, the website Cave started in 2018 where he answers fans’ questions on topics ranging from faith and grief to his favourite brand of hair dye (L’Oreal, apparently). Even the announcements at the train station have been changed: arrivals are temporarily greeted by the sound of Nick Cave welcoming them to Brighton.
All these have been well-publicised, but judging by the crowd gathering in Kensington Gardens, a narrow pedestrian road in North Laine – not far from Jubilee Street, the subject of a Cave song – word also seems to have leaked out about a theoretically secret event: a live performance on the roof of Resident Records, which is hosting the two-day Nick Cave pop-up shop.
A substantial group has already assembled, an hour before the performance is scheduled to begin. Some have been tipped off in advance (“My mate told me about it last night, he’s very well connected”). Others simply arrived in order to avail themselves of an exclusive Cave picture disc. (It sold out yesterday and there are already copies on eBay for £60, one disgruntled punter notes, before suggesting that the enterprising soul behind the eBay listing is “a bastard”.) After seeing the musical equipment on the roof, they put two and two together.
By 10.30am, the street is packed. A security guard manages to keep a narrow flow of pedestrians moving through its centre, but no one seems to have considered Snoopers Paradise, the vintage market across the road. The crowd jams its doorways and shoppers can’t get out: “What’s going on?” asks a plaintive voice. “Oh, I can’t stand Nick Cave.”
Said voice is clearly in the minority. The startling thing about the crowd is that it largely isn’t comprised of curious locals: there are people here from Germany, Norway, France, all of whom have flown in specially for the Preston Park gig. There is talk of visitors from the US and east Asia. A couple from Oslo are enjoying what they call “a Nick Cave summer”, following the Bad Seeds around Europe: “Well, we’re going to four shows – he’s playing 32”. The Brighton show has extra appeal, says Lisa, who has travelled down from Edinburgh with her partner because it’s a kind of a hometown gig, although “former adopted hometown” gig would be more accurate. “He lived in Brighton for a long time – he moved when his son died,” she says, referring to Arthur Cave, who fell from a cliff in Ovingdean in 2015. “So it feels quite poignant.”
The distance some people in the crowd have travelled reflects Cave’s ongoing purple patch. The music he has released in the last decade – most notably 2019’s extraordinary mediation on loss, Ghosteen – has been some of the most acclaimed of his career. The harrowing documentary film One More Time With Feeling met with similar acclaim, as did Faith Hope and Carnage, a book containing an astonishingly frank series of interviews with journalist Sean O’Hagan.
Cave has courted controversy over his opposition to the cultural boycott of Israel, although it doesn’t seem to have impacted his popularity. Improbably, the Bad Seeds began playing arena-sized venues at the exact moment their music took a turn towards the abstract, with 2016’s Skeleton Tree, although Lisa suggests the crowds may have been swelled by those only familiar with his most famous songs. “I think there were a lot of Peaky Blinders fans in the audience when he played Glasgow,” she says, “just waiting to hear Red Right Hand.” She wrinkles her noise, irritably. “They were quite chatty during the rest of it.”
By the time Cave and the Bad Seeds arrive, there are people gathered not just on the street but on the roofs of adjacent shops. The set is eclectic – lurching from the apocalyptic clatter of 1985’s Train Long Suffering to a piano-led cover of T Rex’s Cosmic Dancer – and winningly chaotic, as perhaps any performance involving seven musicians and four backing singers on a tiny balcony is wont to be.
Cave occasionally grins at the absurdity of it all (“Fucking Brighton!” he smiles at one point) or issues frantic instructions to his bandmates mid-song, but the really striking thing is how committed his performance is, despite the peculiar circumstances. He hangs precariously over the balcony to conduct the crowd in call-and-response vocals. Singing Henry Lee as a duet with Janet Ramus, he performs it as if wracked by a desire for both the backing vocalist and his wife, Susie, who is watching from an adjacent balcony. Then again, onstage commitment regardless of the circumstances is something of a Cave trademark, as our Norwegian friends enjoying their summer of Nick note. “In Antwerp, the show was in the middle of a heatwave and he played for two and a half hours wearing a three-piece suit.”
It ends with a version of Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry. The police arrive shortly afterwards – one suspects the gig was not officially sanctioned – but the crowd are already dispersing, most of them in the direction of Preston Park. It’s hours before the Bad Seeds are due on stage, but the real lure seems to be the opportunity to outwit the bastards on eBay: a rumour suggests remaining copies of the exclusive picture disc are on sale there, and people scurry off.
