Photo Gallery: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at The Salt Shed • Chicago

Brassneck | April 29, 2025

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds

The Salt Shed

Chicago, IL

April 28, 2025

Recap and Photos by Curt Baran

Seeing Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds always feels ritualistic. Not unlike attending a church service albeit a baptism with music instead of holy water.
But Cave has no script, no good book to follow or scripture to quote from. He plumbs the depths of life, death, love, passion, sex, right and wrong, but does so in a way that absolutely blurs traditional notions of the aforementioned norms.

The man and his band have recently hit the road supporting their 18th(!) record (Wild God) together. The tour stopped off at Chicago’s Salt Shed for the first of two sold-out nights at one on the city’s North Side.

The band wasted no time getting down to the business of saving souls. Opener “Frogs” found Cave as a sharped dressed salesman, peddling snake oil one minute and promising redemption moments later. Almost immediately, he broke down the “fourth wall” that separated performer and attendees by way of a stage-width catwalk, putting the dapper charlatan almost enveloped by his rapt audience. Although it’s a tact he’s used often, the effect never dampens, merging audience with the performers immediately establishes a communal vibe. No one’s quite sure where they’re headed, but the collective all traverse in their arduous sojourn together.

The evening’s set list drew generously from the most recent album tracks (“Song Of The Lake,” “Wild God” “Cinnamon Horses”), but it’s always been Cave’s older, darker material that still manages to resonate with the most intensity, specifically numbers like “Red Right Hand,” “The Mercy Seat,” “Tupelo” and the always moving “The Weeping Song.”

Even with a backing gospel choir, Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood handling bass chores and Cave’s forever indomitable, multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis pushing the music along, it’s always Cave who owns the spotlight. Whether he’s shouting to the heavens or bellowing down into the abyss, over the course of nearly two hours, he certainly made the journey even more captivating than the unknown destination.