Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds @ Carling Academy, 4 May

Tonight, there are moments of panic. Body to body, sweat on sweat. Even the skinniest of asses can’t squeeze their way through the sold-out Academy crowd. Opening with Night of the Lotus Eaters, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds fittingly describe the hysteria of the moment with references to some parallel universe: people are hot, eager and bothered. Sexually bothered. Nick Cave still oozes sex, 50 year-old 'I’ve been doing this a long time and have seen things you people can’t even imagine' sex. Long of 'tache and lanky of limb, Cave exorcises the crowd of its demons as one hand points to the heavens and the other feverishly attacks a keyboard. Jim Sclavunos and Mick Harvey rotate instruments in a manner befitting the renaissance men they are while Warren Ellis plays the fiddle like some sort of mischievous sprite trying to thread a voodoo needle. Stagger Lee wraps up the set, with Cave howling about the sucking of his "muthafuckin’ cock." A woman close by whispers, "the pheromones spewing forth from that thin man and his naughty, naughty music…" The crowd hollers as the tune wraps, begging for a third encore. The Seeds leave us as a sweaty mass; the gospel ringing in our ears while sin heavily hangs in the air. Incredible.