On 31 July, nearly 50,000 people gathered in Preston Park for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ return to Brighton, where the band’s frontman lived for over two decades, making it the largest ticketed event in the city’s history. Earlier that day, Cave and the band had played a surprise rooftop set at Resident Records, moving from close quarters to near-spectacle without losing any of their intensity. Cave later described the concert as a “homecoming in many different ways”, writing in The Red Hand Files of a band able to hold “pure chaos and the most acute intimacy” at once. Kylie Minogue appeared midway through the night for Where the Wild Roses Grow, dressed in a white lace gown made by Susie Cave. For Cave, it was a night in which “the absent and the present could dance together”.
For Another Man, photographer Douglas Irvine was there to capture the action. See the photo essay below.
“I feel nothing but love for Brighton, with its defiant, lunatic, almost melancholic energy” – Nick Cave
