Nick Cave reunites with Kylie Minogue in a spellbinding Bad Seeds show
Nick Cave reunites with Kylie Minogue in a spellbinding Bad Seeds show
Neil McCormickSat, August 1, 2026 at 1:16 PM UTC
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Kylie Minogue joined Nick Cave for a performance of Where the Wild Roses Grow - Chloe Hashemi
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ concert in Preston Park, Brighton, was a kind of rapturous homecoming for the Australian émigré, who has made the British seaside town his base for decades. It was even blessed by the appearance of an even more famous Aussie immigrant icon, Kylie Minogue, who glided on in a lacy white ballgown to sprinkle some glamorous pop magic on a barnstorming rock concert.
The whole park erupted in delight upon her arrival, joining in lustily with Where the Wild Roses Grow, the 1995 odd-couple duet that gave Cave his only hit single. You will never hear a more joyous sing-along of a murder ballad in which a pop princess is done in by a leering goth.
At the song’s conclusion, the spindly yet imperious 6ft 2in singer-songwriter folded himself over to embrace his dainty 5ft singing partner, like a vampire swooping in gleefully on a willing victim, while she declared “never-ending, undying love” for him. “I love you so so much, Nick!” she proclaimed as she vanished into the wings, just as the 10-piece band exploded into The Mercy Seat, a gushing torrent of a song about the last confession of a man sitting on the electric chair.
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The Bad Seeds are able deftly to shift from delicate ballads to pounding blues rock - Tristan Fewings/Getty
Over 43 years, Cave and his ever-shifting ensemble have become one of the most fluid, epic and awe-inspiring live bands on the planet. Their dynamic range is immense, shifting from tremulously delicate balladry in which you could hear a pin drop, to pounding mantric blues rock laced with choral gospel epiphanies. One of the greatest and boldest lyricists of all time, Cave has gone from being a marginal, experimental outlier to becoming a revered household name, with a persona that somehow crosses the wild, shamanic power of Jim Morrison with the tender sagacity of Leonard Cohen. His impulse is to make concerts a transformational experience where the audience can lose and find themselves in the music, and in Preston Park he found a receptive audience: 30,000 outdoor revellers held absolutely spellbound for two and a half hours.
Cave made frequent references to his adopted hometown, gesturing towards the skyline to point out the setting of his 2013 single Jubilee Street, “nearby the enormous Five Guys burger shop they’ve erected there to immortalise this song”. The ballad Wide Lovely Eyes was dedicated to his wife, Suzie, because: “It’s about her, and it’s about Brighton beach – the camp town end… not the nudist section.”
Between songs, Cave talks with a mix of profundity and dry wit. When he sings, he seems completely carried away with his music – his long, expressive face creased with pain on the dark mantra Hollywood, transfigured with hope on the delicately wheezy Rings of Saturn and filled with mischievous glee on a mesmeric rendition of Red Right Hand, which he somehow performed among the dense crowd, held aloft on a platform of raised hands.
“I’ve no idea what I’m doing here,” he said at the end, as if snapping out of a spell. “Can you just gently lower me down?” It was that kind of experience, an overwhelmingly involving show by one of the greatest bands on Earth.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
