Nick Cave Casts A Magic Spell At His Intimate NYC Solo Concert

Even when he’s not surrounded by his Bad Seeds bandmates or standing over the audience in the front of the stage and touching their hands, Nick Cave on his own still manages to be a compelling and magnetic performer. That was the case of his Saturday show at New York City’s Beacon Theatre, where, outside of him employing a bass player, the Australian music icon performed by himself for two hours behind a piano. In that setting, Cave’s somber and uplifting music took on an even more raw and vulnerable guise, with the constants being his distinctive baritone singing and the emotional tumult of his lyrics.

The recent stop Big Apple tour stop for Cave—who played at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre the night before and is performing again at the Beacon Sunday—coincided with the recent paperback publication of his 2022 memoir, Faith, Hope and Carnage (co-written with the journalist Seán O’Hagan); he and Hagan also participated in a discussion about the book at 92NY this past Thursday. That work and the solo shows provided the perfect occasion to revisit and appreciate Cave’s long career as a documentarian of the human condition where spirituality, violence and love collide amid a backdrop of post-punk, Gothic rock and the American blues.