There is gold tinsel, there are wafts of stage fog. The iron curtain goes down. He drives up. A huge drum makes your stomach vibrate. Video projections of naked bodies in an embryonic position rotate weightlessly above the band like roast chicken. Katharina Bach sings Nick Cave, her band bitch boy plays. “The Fe.Male Trail” is the name of the evening in the Munich Kammerspiele, the irritation of which begins early on. No, drinks only in the anteroom, no beer in front of the stage. Admission: The musicians seem to be asleep on stage – a soundscape of sound and words.
This won’t be a rock concert. It’s the meta version of a rock show. Katherina Bach has a powerful voice that shapes Cave’s songs effortlessly. Guitarist Tomek Witiak, pianist Yuriy Sych, bassist Tim Roth and drummer Martin Standke deliver the polished numbers with amazing precision. In front of the bass player: a laptop that expands the sound space with samples. The pianist has before him an analog synthesizer monster that still promises a better future. Katharina Bach is inspired by Cave’s stage poses – grand gestures that tend to come from the hip. “Do You Love Me?”, “Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow”. Between the songs there is text violence in German. Death piles up ragingly on Eros on religion on madness on wit until every sense is buried. Bach plays the trumpet from the balcony and sings a few costume changes later, all in black, a daringly reduced version of “No More Shall We Part”, which crackles so brittlely that the band’s entrance then lights up the room.
Only Nick Cave shines through behind all the conception of the evening. For example, his “Red Right Hand”. There were concert moments when the earth tore open with the chime of the bell. Cave was prophet, madman. Here Hell is a play, and Bach walks in the background, waving incense and wearing a tiara. Nick Cave speaks God on the answering machine on his new album. Again and again. And hopes that someone will finally take off. He has his reasons. They reach deeper than this stage perfection can contain.