Intense. If you tied me to a one word review of Tuesday’s Kunstrasen concert by Nick Cave, that’s the word I would choose. For me, and I’m sure for many others too, this was the show not to miss in Bonn this year. Not surprisingly the show was sold out with 10,000 in attendance and there were occasions when it looked like Cave just might walk supported on the hands of each and everyone of those spectators all the way to the last row.

Cave has been considered one of the premier writers in rock music for some years now. In 2010 the UK music paper NME placed him 19th in the greatest living lyricist category. If you don’t know his name you’ve probably heard Nick Cave’s music anyway. There are Cave compositions in Batman Forever (There is a Light), Peaky Blinders (Red Right Hand) and Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows (O Children). There is even a Nick Cave song (Red Right Hand) featured far back in a 1994 episode of The X Files. So if you’re new to Nick Cave you’ve been missing a lot of great music, and on tonight’s performance you have also been missing one of the best live performers on the planet.

“Playing Live is a communal experience” is how Nick Cave described performing on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. To that end Cave has a very particular ramp set-up in front of stage. Its ‘T’ shape allows him not just to hold hands with but also to to walk down and literally into the audience. It’s something I expected to happen later in the show for a few minutes, but instead he made the journey regularly during his over two hour set that began very aptly with ‘Get Ready For Love’.

Only five songs into the set and ‘Tupelo’, Cave’s homage to Elvis builds and builds with old testament lyrics and thunder. I’m thinking “Why isn’t it raining? thunder and lightning?” the sheer energy coming off of the stage is incredible. Not just from Cave. Fiddle virtuoso Warren Ellis seems to be possessed by the devil incarnate as he shakes and waves his violin threateningly to the heavens. This isn’t your ‘Walking in Memphis’ style Presley tribute for sure. Cave knows his Elvis, knows the King had a stillborn brother, and knows his Old Testament.

‘Well Saturday gives what Sunday steals
And a child is born on his brothers heels
Sunday morning the first-born dead
In a shoebox tied with a ribbon of red’

The song reaches it’s climax. The stage glows dark red and fades to black. Cave throws his microphone down onto the stage. Ellis sinks to his knees. the lights flash. Pure adenalin. and we’re barely a quarter way into the evening…

The power was so immense that even the band have to re-settle. Cave is eager to start ‘Carnage’ but Colin Greenwood’s bass guitar has gone out of tune. “Colin is tuning his bass. It’s something we don’t do in the bad seeds. It must be a Radiohead thing!” he bemoans with a smile at the Radiohead man himself. So Cave is recouping his energy sitting at the piano and the song ‘Carnage’ is by any nature anyway slower than what preceeded it. It still packs a lyrical punch though: “My uncle’s at the chopping block. Turning chickens into fountains”. Nick Cave does not mince his words for sure.

There are so many highpoints in the set that this report could go on for a good while longer. I’ll try to keep it short… ‘Henry Lee’ certainly deserves mention, a moving duet shared with Janet Ramus telling its dark tale of murder. ‘Mercy Seat’ was certainly a highlight too. I’d only heard the understated power of Johnny Cash’s version before but here, in a packed venue and with a full 10 piece band including three backing singers, the track takes on even more dimension. As in many of Cages songs, although I can hear the words, understanding their meaning in the context of his lyrics is another matter at times. Attempts to enlighten us about the context of his complex material are vague this evening to say the least. ‘Bright Horses’ he says “Encapsulates everything I believe about everything”. Maybe he’s playing with the audience, as when a fan holds out paper for a signature just as a song begins. Cave looks angry, then calmly takes the paper, puts it in his pocket, says “Thank you for that. Very kind of you” and then continues the song. He takes a seat briefly again for ‘Rings of Saturn’ but is soon up up on his polished shoes and out on that catwalk-ramp. Bowing briefly down to the front row and then slowly raising his arms up to the air. A movement reflected back out to the distant back rows like a vertical Mexican wave.

The sound is strong all the way to those back rows tonight too. They have to rely on two giant screens to actually see a black and white Nick Cave in any detail, and for some reason when the cameras cut to other band members the focus blurs, but the intensity of emotions onstage comes sailing across the cooling Kunstrasen air even if the images get wavy. A Nick Cave concert is parts emotion, parts bible old and new, parts love songs, parts anger songs but all emotion. Cave himself admits that, despite the heavy biblical overtones of his texts, he doesn’t know where he stands where God is concerned. As he sings the closing ‘Into My Arms’

“I don’t believe in the existence of angels
But looking at you I wonder if that’s true
But if I did I would summon them together
And ask them to watch over you”

It seems to each listener as if he is speaking personally to them. No mean feat in an audience of 10,000.

Maybe I should stop trying to analyse what makes the man so special and leave it instead to man who is qualified to judge the lyrics of others but not known for effusive praise:

Absolutely correct Bob. To which I can only add – ‘Intense!’