All Points East review: Emotive and electric, Nick Cave’s storytelling has festival spinning around

Spinning around: Aussie duo Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave perform live
Raphael Pour-Hashemi

As if the line-up of the final day of All Points East wasn’t strong enough, Nick Cave brought on Kylie Minogue midway through his set.

The two Australians, below, gave an affectionate performance of their 1995 duet Where The Wild Roses Grow. “I should be so lucky,” he joked when Minogue, 50, left the stage.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds put on an exultant show that spanned their career. Still spry at 60, Cave kept leaping down from the stage to clasp the hands of fans, who were captivated by his storytelling, emotional range and poetic lyrics.
Girl In Amber, from Cave’s last album, Skeleton Tree, was a poignant tribute to his wife, Susie. The video showed her with her back to the camera on Brighton beach, near where their son Arthur died in 2015.

Here, as on the record, Cave articulated their family’s love in unvarnished, human terms. As Deanna began, Cave ambled right down into the crowd and brought scores of them back up on stage for the closing performance of Stagger Lee.
Earlier on, St Vincent, aka Annie Clark, charmed the festival with her warped take on fuzzy rock and electronic pop.

When she was in London last year her band was notably absent, but they were back last night. While Clark has more than enough charisma to command a stage, the band allowed her to be more ambitious, freed from the restraints of the album as she worked her way through a series of neon-coloured guitars.

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1/10

On the main stage before Cave, Patti Smith played a stridently political set, rousing the crowd with declarations about people power and a dearth of good world leaders.
But the night belonged to Cave.

In Jubilee Street he sang, “I am transforming/I am vibrating/I am glowing/I am flying/Look at me now.” And he truly was.

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