Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Malahide Castle – Live Review – 10/06/26

Irish band Bleech 9:3 were the first on stage for the evening. The four-piece entertained the small crowd, and it will certainly help their status to be included on a line-up such as this.

Lykke Li was next on stage. She seemed a little annoyed with the size of the crowd, asking if there would be more here for Nick Cave? She asked the audience at one point if they knew her next song (sex money feelings die), and when a few shouted their approval, she said he had three Irish fans, which was better than none! It was always an interesting choice to have the Swedish indie pop singer as support for Nick Cave, and you would suspect there are many more natural choices for the lineup. She finished her short set with “I Follow Rivers” from her 2011 album Wounded Rhymes, which received a good reaction from the audience!

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were stunningly punctual for their advertised 8pm stage time. The set started with the impressive Get Ready for Love, moving swiftly into From Her to Eternity, for a powerful start to the evening. Nick seemed annoyed at performing ‘in daylight’, suggesting that, from his perspective, the crowd would be better off in darkness! The Irish crowd were well on side, with Nick’s shouts of ‘Fucking Dublin’ getting a reaction each time, along with the now standard call and response of ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’.

The set moved into a slower, more experimental groove. The band are just about to go on a European festival tour, which Nick described as endless, and compared it to the book he’s currently reading, ‘Dante’s Inferno’. Train Long-Suffering was next up, a song that ‘would need a Zimmer frame’ according to Nick. It came from the 1985 release The Firstborn Is Dead and has rarely been performed since that tour. Nobody’s Baby Now is also rarely performed, and it received an impressive airing. The setlist then returned to songs many would have heard in the 3Arena in November 2024, such as Tupelo and Carnage, which substituted a local name, with “Listening to Sinead O’Connor” changed for “Reading Flannery O’Connor”.

The setlist then moved into more traditional territory, with some Nick Cave classics with Henry Lee (a duet with backing singer Janet Ramus taking the part of PJ Harvey), The Mercy Seat, Red Right Hand and piano ballad Into My Arms before finishing with Hollywood. Nick Cave is known for his prolonged encores, and this time out, the audience got 6 tracks, with Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry and Jubilee Street particularly catching the imagination. They ended the evening with a touching tribute to Shane MacGowan, with the classic A Rainy Night in Soho. Nick Cave is a consummate showman and is one of the best performers at working a stadium audience, like a Baptist minister tending to his flock.

Setlist

Get Ready for Love
From Her to Eternity
Wild God
O Children
Train Long-Suffering
City of Refuge
Nobody’s Baby Now
Tupelo
Carnage (Nick Cave & Warren Ellis cover)
Joy
Rings of Saturn
Bright Horses
Henry Lee
The Mercy Seat
Red Right Hand
Into My Arms
Hiding All Away / White Elephant
Hollywood

Encore:
Stranger Than Kindness (First time since 2015)
Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry
Jubilee Street
The Weeping Song
Wide Lovely Eyes
A Rainy Night in Soho – (The Pogues cover) (First time by The Bad Seeds since 1997)