Brothers and sisters, sinners and saints, all were welcome in the grand cathedral of St Nick. Onto a stage filled with suited Bad Seeds pastors and angelic silver gospel singers, strode Nick Cave, the gentleman preacher with something of the devil about him for the second of his two O2 gigs this weekend. It was less rock show and more sonic communion, Pentecostal rapture and the laying on of hands.
Once a formidable figure of sour intensity and menace, the unthinkable tragedies that have struck Cave’s life of late – losing two sons since 2015 – have made him instead a conduit of collective empathy, particularly as he has worked through his anguish on haunted, contemplative and experimental recent albums.
