Live God, the latest release from Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, documents an emotional night in Paris from the band’s ongoing Wild God Tour. It was recorded at Accor Arena on November 17, 2024, capturing a stirring performance of selections from Cave’s heartbreaking yet joyful album, Wild God, alongside songs from his sprawling catalog.
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To give you a sense of the rapture and energy conjured by Cave and his longtime band, here are three cathartic tracks from Live God. Perhaps they’ll move you as much as they moved Bob Dylan, who attended the Paris show.
“Frogs”
“Frogs” opens with Cain murdering his brother Abel. The biblical scene is followed by Cave and his wife walking in the rain. Against a backdrop of human suffering, Cave sees life and the frogs represent humans bouncing around the planet—searching, wondering, and leaping toward transcendence.
From there, Cave winds up in the heavens with the deceased, more frogs, hopping among the clouds. Casting rationality aside, Cave sees Kris Kristofferson kicking a can, referencing Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down”. He’s shouting, screaming, beseeching the abyss of the cosmos, defiant against the fate that awaits us all.
“Joy”
In 2015, Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died after falling from a cliff near Brighton, England. He’s the teen ghost in Cave’s heartbreaking 2019 album Ghosteen. An album one must experience to understand Wild God and Cave’s persistence, raging against unspeakable grief.
A sense of joy is the heart of Wild God, taming the unruly beast of life, nature, existence. On “Joy”, when Cave pleads, “Have mercy on me, please,” the audience in Paris becomes silent. As a writer, I’m supposed to deliver the details dispassionately. But you understand why Dylan was struck by this song. He’s not the only one.
“Into My Arms”
Cave’s love ballad from The Boatman’s Call appears near the end of the set. In Faith, Hope And Carnage, Cave said he wrote “Into My Arms” during a stint in rehab. It’s since become something of a hymn. Here, alone at the piano, he leads his congregation, those in the audience, some believers, some not, just like the narrator in the song. It’s a broken man’s love story. Written in an institution, surrounded by junkies, by damage, and countless busted relationships.
Not every concert feels like church, but all of them are a kind of communion. On this night, a multitude of accents sing in English as Cave leads the Parisian audience into a chorus. In the arms of a large crowd, they transform into a collective refuge. Like, as Cormac McCarthy once wrote, the disciples of a new faith.
Photo by Jack Flynn/Shutterstock
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