Nick Cave looms large over Alexandra Palace. Quite literally: the lighting in the Great Hall is arranged so that when he stands stage left, the singer's rangy frame casts a huge, dramatic shadow over the venue's right wall. It moves across the columns and ornate windows, looking both a bit creepy and oddly amusing, a striking cross between Max Schreck in Nosferatu and the Cat In the Hat.
It's either a happy accident, or a masterstroke of stagecraft, giving those at the back of the hall something to watch, a suitably ghostly equivalent of those video screens you get at stadium rock shows. It provides the perfect complement to Cave's compelling stage persona: limbs flailing, fag in hand, voice occasionally wandering a little too far from the tune for comfort, he is alternately terrifying and weirdly comic. He switches with swaggering confidence from hellfire preacher mode - bellowing, prowling the stage, deploying a surprising range of high kicks - to something more self-deprecating: "Thangyew. This next song is about ships an' bridges an' history an' shit."
Over the years, the Bad Seeds' sharp-suited ranks have mushroomed to the point where they look distinctly overstaffed. They now seem to have one more of everything than is strictly necessary - two drummers, three guitarists, four backing singers - but they sound awesome. They can do delicacy, as proven by a sweetly affecting Ship Song, but it's the end-is-nigh stuff that's the most startling: a version of Tupelo so intense you feel it could start raining fire from the heavens at any minute. The Mercy Seat starts out in a stripped-down acoustic arrangement but by its climax it has turned into something positively torrential. Driven by ominous drum rolls, it fills the room, which is no mean feat. Favoured by artists who reach a certain pitch of success but feel their music is too rarefied for sports arenas, Alexandra Palace's rotten sight lines and duff acoustics have a habit of cutting bands down to size. No danger of that tonight. Operating at the peak of his powers 25 years into his career, Cave and his backing band seem invincible.
