A Stunning Closing Set
Late on Sunday gloomy clouds hurried across the sky, a perfect setting for the dark majesty of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds taking to the stage. Blood red curtains a hundred feet high revealed the presence of Latitude's most incongruous, beautifully suited and final headliners. Many of the Latitude attendees were apparently unable to resist the lure of Beth Ditto's charms, with The Gossip playing simultaneously in the Uncut Arena, but the faithful and the lost were left to witness Cave and the band roar into their festival closing set.
Tupelo introduced the Bad Seeds aesthetic tonight, now bereft of original members Mick Harvey and Blixa Bargeld. Instead, pinstriped bearded maniac Warren Ellis ("He's a fucker, that man's a fucker" warned Cave between songs) wielded his angry violin at the crowd, extracting miniature guitars and discordant sound effects from his private armory. In turn, Conway Savage's piano fought a pair of drummers to balance the different facets Cave sought to bring to the show. 'Deanna', 'The Mercy Seat', 'Papa Won't Leave You Henry' all arrived, as vicious and heartfelt as you would expect, with a crashing 'Midnight Man' and the Velvet Underground tinged 'Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!' set out from their last album. The heartbreaking gentle laments of 'The Ship Song' and 'Henry Lee' were the tender counterpoints to the raw, brooding groove of 'Red Right Hand', which was both unleashed and hungry.
The exasperated and desperate 'There She Goes My Beautiful World' ("Gauguin... he fucked off man, and went all tropical") bemoaned the ridiculousness of ambition, which was touched upon again in the jarringly abstract 'We Call Upon The Author To Explain'. The show closed with the long dark funk of the murderous 'Stagger Lee', which rolled across the Guardianista readers who were now lost in the darkness. "Furthermore I fuck Billy Dilly in his motherfucking ass" squealed Cave, voicing one character after another in his killing frenzy, "... and I'll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get one fat boy's asshole". Never less than funny and touching, seductive and electric, Cave's "Thanks you've been fabulous" seemed only mildly insincere.
Set List:
'Tupelo'
'Deanna'
'Red Right Hand'
'Weeping Song'
'The Mercy Seat'
'The Ship Song'
'Dig Lazarus Dig!!!'
'Papa Wont Leave You, Henry'
'There She Goes My Beautiful World'
'Midnight Man'
'Henry Lee'
'We Call Upon The Author to Explain'
'Stagger Lee'