Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Obelisk Arena Sunday, 21.30

The Biblical deluges might have ended and a glorious evening begun, but that doesn't stop Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds opening with a thundering ‘Tupelo'. Quite whether the "lil children", at this hour finally thin on the ground, are being provoked into an anticipation of an encounter with the Sandman inside their Millets family size over yonder horizon in the campsite is up for debate, but The Bad Seeds certainly rip into the most fearsome performance of the weekend. Much of it has to do with the spectacle, life and thirst-seived faces topping well-cut suits cutting raucous moves that'd be beyond men half their age. For, aside from the Nocturama wobble at the turn of the century, The Bad Seeds work in a very male genre that naturally and usually leads itself to conservatism and losing the plot as you lose your hair, but there's no sign of them mellowing their sound as they move deeper into middle age. Indeed, the roughing up of the oeuvre that was inspired by Grinderman has merely taken a turn for the nastier with the addition of former Saint Ed Kuepper on guitar instead of Mick Harvey. Stalwarts like ‘Red Right Hand' and ‘Stagger Lee' are given new arrangements, Warren Ellis once more pivotal with his fiddle and tiny guitars, flobbing into the air and the spittle falling back into his own face before, cruelly, it's all over, far too soon.