Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ Wild God Tour has evolved worldwide, but Australia and NZ are set to receive its most focused and confident form.
Nick Cave has never approached touring as a victory lap. Even now, decades deep into his career, the live show remains a place where songs are tested, bent, and sometimes quietly rewritten. That instinct matters when you look at where the Wild God Tour is heading next, because by the time Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds reach Australia and New Zealand, the tour will be fully formed.
Across Europe and the UK, the Wild God Tour has done what Cave’s tours tend to do when given time and repetition. It has settled. Early shows leaned into discovery, with new songs carrying a sense of risk, pressed up against a catalogue that stretches back more than forty years. That tension has always been part of Cave’s live identity, but it takes time for those competing forces to stop jostling and start speaking to each other.
What’s emerged overseas is a tour that understands its own shape and has received acclaim for doing so. Songs from Wild God no longer arrive needing justification. They sit comfortably alongside older material, rather than as interruptions to the flow that have some Nick Cave fans rolling their eyes or turning to their phones until they finish. Peaks arrive without being telegraphed, and quieter moments are allowed to remain quiet.
That kind of control doesn’t come from rehearsal alone. It comes from nights on stage where the band learns exactly how far a song can be pushed, and when it should be pulled back.
We Real Cool
This iteration of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds feels notably unburdened by the past. There is no attempt to recreate old eras or trade on nostalgia, with the focus now on presence and precision.
As the tour has progressed, the band has grown increasingly confident in its choices. Arrangements have been pared back or stretched out as needed, never out of habit. Warren Ellis continues to act as the emotional centre, but the strength of the current lineup lies in how unified it feels. Nothing sounds reactive, and the room is being guided rather than chased.
Just recently, Nick Cave took to his blog The Red Hand Files to share his experience seeing Radiohead live – his first time attending an arena show as an audience member, rather than a performer. He likened it to a spiritual experience, calling it a “transcendent opportunity.” The Wild God Tour seems poised to deliver that same powerful experience when it touches down in Australia and NZ this week.
Nature Boy
There’s something particular about how Nick Cave’s upcoming tour intersects with Australian spaces. The decision to stage outdoor shows in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane feels aligned with where Cave’s music currently sits.
Recent material carries a sense of openness that benefits from scale. In outdoor settings, the music feels less compressed, less enclosed. Audience participation becomes collective rather than confrontational. Cave has always known how to work a crowd, but these shows allow that connection to spread outward rather than funnel inward.
The indoor dates in Adelaide and Wellington offer a counterpoint. Those rooms bring a level of closeness that sharpens the emotional weight without shrinking it. Cave has long been adept at adjusting his intensity to fit the space, and this run of mixed venues gives the tour room to show its range.
(Are You) The One I’ve Been Waiting For?
It’s been almost a decade since Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds last toured Australia and New Zealand. That time away matters. This is not a homecoming built on familiarity or sentiment. Cave returns as an artist who has reshaped both his writing and his sense of what a live show can be, and the audience returns to watch having also evolved. This return feels like two old friends meeting up for coffee after a long time apart, both having fundamentally changed, but still conversing in unison like no time has passed at all.
Australian audiences are arriving at a point where the uncertainty has already been worked through elsewhere.
Bring It On
A career-spanning setlist from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds is expected at this stage. What separates this tour is how carefully that history is handled.
Recent shows have avoided easy crowd-pleasers in favour of emotional continuity. Older songs are chosen for how they speak to the present, not simply because they are recognised. The Wild God material isn’t competing with the past. That clarity is the result of months on the road. By now, the band knows where the silences belong, and they know when to resist momentum and when to release it.
Some tours peak early. Others peak once everything unnecessary has been stripped away. The Wild God Tour falls firmly into the latter. Australia and New Zealand are set to receive the most distilled version of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ run: confident, precise, and fully aware of what it is trying to do.Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds kick off their Wild God Tour in Australia and NZ on Saturday, 17 January in Perth. You can check out the tour dates and ticket details here.
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