Here comes the devil. On July 14, 2014, Nick Cave materializes inside ACL Live at the Moody Theater, 13 dates into one of the most extensive North American tours the bad Australian seed has ever embarked upon.
Cave and his crew return to Austin for their first appearance since South By Southwest, where he sat down for a panels interview and also debuted his departure disc Push the Sky Away at a packed-out and delirious Stubb’s. An even newer album will be in tow: the stripped down Live at KCRW, recorded at the Los Angeles radio station in mid-April and set for release on Record Store Day 2013, part two, Nov. 29 – Black Friday.
According to Cave, who held an exclusive online video press conference for alternative weeklies last Thursday, the 10-track LP pulls songs from Push the Sky Away and includes fan favorites like closer “Jack the Ripper,” off 1992’s Henry’s Dream). The endeavor wasn’t originally in the cards.
“We didn’t intend to make a live record,” he admitted. “It was kind of stuck at the end of a long, grueling American tour. The last thing we wanted to do was go into a radio station and play songs on our day off. It felt very much like we could lose ourselves in the songs, and what came out of it was something really beautiful.
“It was just a really special time.
“I don’t like a lot of live records,” he continued. “A lot of live records are boring, because you don’t get the power and the energy in the same way. But this particular record really captured the quiet energy of this performance. It was so beautiful that we felt we should put it out in some way.”
You can get an advance download for two of the songs from Live at KCRW here. Tickets go on sale Friday, but a special pre-sale begins tomorrow, Tuesday, Nov. 19, at 10am.
This article appears in November 15 • 2013.