Veteran singer-songwriter Nick Cave has just shared a trailer for his upcoming concert film Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace. As the title suggests, the 90 minute feature will consist of Cave alone at a piano in the venue’s west concert hall, performing songs chosen from throughout his lengthy catalogue, from “early Bad Seeds and Grinderman, right through to the most recent … album, Ghosteen” according to his official website.
His website also details that despite the fact that filming already took place last month, Idiot Prayer… will be streamed on the 23rd of July as if it were a live performance, meaning that viewers will not be able to pause or rewind the film, nor access it once it has finished screening. Credits for Idiot Prayer… – which Cave has called the “luminous and heartfelt climax” of a trilogy preceded by his earlier concert films 20,000 Days on Earth and One More Time with Feeling – include the award-winning cinematographer behind The Favourite and Marriage Story Robbie Ryan, as well as editor Nick Emerson (Lady Macbeth, Emma).
Take part in a special 20,000 Days on Earth watching / listening party on Sunday 28 June at 6pm (BST) with the directors @iainandjane live tweeting with @Tim_Burgess #TimsTwitterListeningParty pic.twitter.com/HaRFA5yZk3
— Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (@nickcave) June 23, 2020
Over the course of the three minute teaser, Cave sits reading a notepad before making his way through the empty palace to take a seat at the piano. His voice accompanies the clip, reading aloud lyrics from the mediative opener to Ghosteen “Spinning Song”: “Once there was a song/The song yearned to be sung/It was a spinning song/About the king of rock ‘n roll”. The trailer ends as Cave begins to play the first few chords of his 1997 The Boatman’s Call cut “Idiot Prayer”, from which the film takes its name.
Watch the trailer for IDIOT PRAYER: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace here: https://t.co/FgKl1JjYZA. Global live streaming event on 23 July 2020. Buy tickets and find out more information including how to stream the event here: https://t.co/tL3zmyQCtr — Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (@nickcave) July 13, 2020
Nick Cave released his seventeenth album with the Bad Seeds Ghosteen last October via his own label Bad Seed to universal critical acclaim. Review aggregate site Metacritic has given Ghosteen a Metascore of 96 out of 100 based on 28 professional reviews, placing it as the second best received record of the entire 2010s (after Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly). Tickets to stream Idiot Prayer… are available through the DICE website, though viewers should note that the time of the broadcast will differ between timezones (for the UK it is 8pm BST). Watch the trailer below:
