Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds Pull The Sky Towards Them Red Right Hand Man. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Pic by Prudence Upton Source: Herald Sun Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds play their biggest Melbourne show to date at Sidney Myer Music Bowl in support of their 15th studio album, the number one chart "hit" Push The Sky Away. HE went from Matador to Minotaur, Band leader to bit player, Captain Caveman to Honorary Doctor. But at all times he was Nick Cave. Cave's come a long way baby. Go back to 1978, the year your scribe was born and try and imagine the rakish, phlegm-hocking psycho of Boys Next Door growing up to play a very-nearly-sold-out Sidney Myer Music Bowl with his "Bad Seeds, a ragtag bunch of wizened, sartorial journeymen who genuflect to the song, the whole song and nothing but the song. Add a section of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Gardenvale Primary School Choir take the total number of human doings on stage to 40. Again, think back to our hero's heroin days and fast forward to this. Hard to fathom. Perennially dapper, Cave claims to get nervous before shows but you'd never know. Deep down he's probably aware the crowd have already submitted their appraisal of the night before he's even set a Manolo on stage, they're going to love it. It's a Nick Cave show, the Nick Cave, their Nick Cave. Local boy made great And so the band strike up and begin with We No Who U R, a song that teases the proliferation of text-speak while teasing out a dubby, piano-led paean to growing older and bolder. Everything simmers. Charcoal lighting swims across the crowded stage. We're now properly prepped. "This is a song I wrote for my wife...about my wife called Wide Lovely Eyes," Cave shares, his brow knitting together like he and Susie Bick have during their 16 year union. Wide Lovely Eyes has the ring of verisimilitude about it but next song Water's Edge has no such truth, it falters when His Tallness loses his nerve. Cave has stopped believing himself when he concludes with "The thrill of love is coming down...people." You can see in his darting eyes he's thinking "Have I been found out? Is this song worthy of my canon? What kind of wanker would suggest he had a canon? F--k's sake. Knew I shouldn't have started with all new songs. The fear doesn't last long though and it could be he was just in a hurry to walk down Jubilee Street, a far superior song about commerce, hypocrisy and the Persistence of Memory. It's glorious. Jubilee Street swells as each Bad Seed gets a little more involved, Warren Ellis" beard starts shooting electric sparks and the MSO and kids choir (affectionately called "kiddies" by Cave. Hilariously, a minute later he is looking at them singing "I am a foetus on a leash") bring their best work to the table. By the end of the song Cave is a new man, he's taken the edge off Water's Edge and is "glowing, I'm vibrating, I'm flying, look at me now." The good doctor has transmogrified into a higher being, floating above the stage like a Gothic Overlord just as Iggy Pop did in Death in Vegas's Aisha. Good vibrations. Reflect, for a moment, the audacity of coming on stage and playing seven new songs (IN A ROW!) from your latest album, Push The Sky Away, yet having every set of ears in the place completely transfixed. Compare this to the Gotye show in the same venue a month ago where the din of chatter and loudly typed Facebook status updates dulled the sounds coming from the stage. Different strokes etc.. Back in the Cave and now that wilfully-aloof, shimmering stanza is done it's time to trek through familiar woods. "The Hits" is scrawled on the setlist; the talking marks a self-deprecating in-joke. Cerulean swathes of light segue from new to the old, From Her To Eternity leading into the chugging, organ-baked delight of Red Right Hand. Cave relishes the loud-soft-loud dynamic and he is more qualified than anybody to play the preacher with a past. Crimson lightning pile-drives the stage, the "kiddies" flinch a little and the MSO are in **awe. Keeping the Melbourne crowd on side, Cave later compliments the string section for "doing a better job than they did in Sydney." Never fails. The Ship Song causes the crowd to emit a knowing sigh. The track from 1990"s The Good Son album set up shop in the hearts and minds of most of the crowd many years ago and it is here to cradle us all again. We make a little history, a beee-behh, every time you come around. Cave wants us to know he can still smite with all his ***might and the 55 year old dredges up venom for Deanna, dining on the flesh of his victim as he reminds her "I'm down here for your soul." The Mercy Seat doubles up on itself and Cave storms left to right and back again, flapping his wings like a demented conductor then the collective leave the stage for the first time. They return in a solemn mood to do Into My Arms then tackle Stagger Lee, Ellis slicing at his violin like a Japanese chef with a mandoline, julienne-style. Annoyingly, a crowd member near me (OK it was me) keeps barking for Tupelo. Four solid minutes of cheering and Cave brings his charges back out for the second encore, chiding Martyn Casey to "hurry up and put your f--king bass on" with a wry grin. The request is met and by now all the seats are empty of bums, people are throwing shapes, chins are raised high, spittle is escaping jaws singing the words and a big black cloud settles on top of the band. Cave doth muster the bluster. Two hours have gone by and we're done. Sated. The cloud dissipates and Melbourne is left with a clear sky, pin-pricked by stars glinting down on the biggest star of all. Apparently he turned up on the set of The Proposition dressed in a blacker-than-black, oxygen-starved suit, started sweating profusely and prolifically and was quickly given shorts and a loose white shirt as the temperatures clawed into the 40s. Everyone on set was ordered to drink at least a litre of water every hour. Especially Cave. If you've never seen the bait and switch brilliance of Red Right Hand tap-thunked live then this needs to be rectified. Earlier he has commentated the untimely end of Miley Cyrus in Higgs Boson Blues as she floats in a pool in Toluca Lake. Everyone smirks but nobody sniggers.