STACK #217 November 2022

MUSIC FEATURE

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Year 2020

NICK CAVE IDIOT PRAYER: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace In AlbumTales, Bryget Chrisfield hits you with some juicy nuggets of wisdom surrounding classic icons and their records.This month it’s the iso-inspired performance album from our national treasure Nick Cave, Idiot Prayer.

Solitary Man record) than The Bad Seeds’ lurching, theatrical OG iteration of this feverish death rattle of a song. Also, The Mercy Seat ’s closing line has got to qualify as one of the best lyrical twists ever written: “...But I’m afraid I told a lie.” According to Cave, he has “never sponsored a musical instrument” before, but became so besotted with the Fazioli piano he played at Alexandra Palace (“It whispered Piano envy

The website that birthed a movement Cave created The Red Hand Files website to communicate directly with his fans, and the cathartic experience of posting responses

Nick Cave announced Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace – originally conceived as a one-off global livestream to herald the UK emerging from lockdown – thusly: “We created something very strange and very beautiful that spoke into this uncertain moment, but was in no way bowed by it”. A reaction to the confinement of many preceding months spent in iso, Idiot Prayer was shot inside London’s empty Alexandra Palace (capacity: 2,500) in a single take, using just two cameras. It’s intimate as hell, basically, and yet another career-defining moment in this extraordinary 65-year-old musician/ writer/visual artist’s brilliant course to date. As well as being picked up for a global cinematic run, Idiot Prayer was also released in live album format.

to fan-submitted questions directly inspired his 2019

in-conversation tour. During these shows, Cave answered fan questions on the fly and also performed a selection of songs from his astounding back catalogue – solo on piano. And it was these stripped-back arrangements – which wonderfully showcased Cave’s mastery of tickling the ivories while also dialling up the emotional resonance of his portrayals – that inspired Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace . . “Johnny Cash recorded one of my songs” During one of his ‘In Conversation’ shows at Melbourne Town Hall, Cave answered a Cash-related question by proclaiming, “It doesn’t matter what

Cave with the sculpture MiddleWay by Romanian artist Bogdan Rata (date unknown). Credit: theredhandfiles.com

to me. It roared at me. It was the most beautiful instrument I had ever played”) that he requested his manager phone the company and procure one. Hilarity ensued, as Cave details in The Red Hand Files , when the “Italian woman” who answered his manager’s phone call mistakenly thought he represented the actor Nicolas Cage before promptly hanging up on him. But although said manager’s follow-up call ended in similar fashion, Cave remains forever hopeful: “I wait for the day a giant removal van will pull up outside my house, my manager hanging out the passenger window, wearing a T-shirt with a piano on it, and a big smile on his face, screaming ‘Fazioli!’” Funeral song for a friend Cave performed Into My Arms at his friend Michael Hutchence’s funeral, requesting his performance not be televised out of respect for the family. On Idiot Prayer , Into My Arms aches with melancholic optimism – and Cave is the king of this specific lovesong style...

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis will be appearing on their Australian Carnage Tour for four dates at the end of November; see frontiertouring.com/ nickcavewarrenellis for details.

anyone says anymore: Johnny Cash recorded one of my songs.” Cave’s piano-and-a-microphone version of The Mercy Seat – stripped right back to its skeleton – flies closer to Cash’s striking rendition (which appears on 2000’s American III:

Still image from the film Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace (2020)

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74 NOVEMBER 2022

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