The Wild God tour reaches an emotional crescendo “Fucking London!” bellows with affectionate gusto, surveying the vast crowd who have come to pay homage in the city where he first made his name. “It seems like we’ve been on tour forever, but now we’re here.” Cave is a pretty good showman these days, so it’s possible he says this kind of thing wherever he plays.
But there must be a part of him that thinks back to those famously confrontational shows at West Hampstead’s Moonlight Club almost 45 years ago and wonders exactly how he ended up headlining two nights at the O2. It’s been a long and sometimes troubled journey, but are defiantly an arena band now. 2024’s is the first album they’ve written specifically to fill venues of this magnitude, and an awesome opening one-two punch of “Frogs” and “Wild God” demonstrates how well they’ve judged the situation.
With a bank of four gospel singers offering an omnipotent wall of sound, Cave immediately assumes the mantle of a crazed TV evangelist, lyrics from the new songs flashing up on the big screen like subliminal messages imploring us to submit to the power of whatever religion this might be: “Bring your spirit down!” It’s an undeniably stunning spectacle, though potentially for seasoned watchers it lacks a little bite. For the first few numbers it could be anyone up there playing those songs, the band deliberately hanging back to allow Cave to seize the stage. But gradually their individual p.
