Nick Cave has shared an eerie new trailer for his upcoming Idiot Prayer: Alone at Alexandria Palace, a live solo show filmed during the coronavirus pandemic, that will go out as a one-off broadcast to fans around the world on July 23rd. The Bad Seeds frontman filmed the unique performance in an empty Alexandra Palace last month. The career-spanning set promises early rarities, songs from Grinderman, right up to his acclaimed 2019 album Ghosteen.
The new trailer offers our first glimpse of Cave roaming solo through the massive theatre, reciting a poem from a notebook before striding through the venue’s empty main hall, settling at a piano for one of his innovative performances yet. Watch below.
IDIOT PRAYER: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace | Global Streaming Event Trailer
In a “note to fans” that arrived with the trailer, Cave said: “Idiot Prayer evolved from my Conversations With… events, performed over the last year or so. I loved playing deconstructed versions of my songs at these shows, distilling them to their essential forms – with an emphasis on the delivery of the words. I felt I was rediscovering the songs all over again, and started to think about going into a studio and recording these reimagined versions at some stage – whenever I could find the time. Then, of course, the world went into lockdown. The Bad Seeds’ global 2020 tour was postponed. Studios shut down. Venues shut down. And the world fell into an eerie, self-reflective silence.”
“It was within this silence that I began to think about the idea of not only recording the songs, but also filming them – and so we started to assemble a small team, including the great cinematographer, Robbie Ryan, sound man, Dom Monks, and editor, Nick Emerson, with the intention to film as soon as it became feasible to get back to business in some way. Meanwhile, I sat at home working out how to play more songs in the Conversations format – new songs and songs from the Ghosteen album, Grinderman songs and early Bad Seeds stuff, and everything in between.”
“We had an amazing production team and crew, and what they did within this extraordinary situation was a marvel. Surrounded by COVID officers with tape measures and thermometers, masked-up gaffers and camera operators, nervous looking technicians and buckets of hand gel, together we created something very strange and very beautiful that spoke into this uncertain moment, but was in no way bowed by it.”
The show was filmed in the West Hall of the iconic London venue by award-winning cinematographer Robbie Ryan. Viewers won’t be able to pause or rewind the one-off broadcast, and it will not be available to stream after it airs on 23rd at 8 pm AEST in Australia. Get tickets and info here.
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