Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds performed a Wild God song for the first time on their 2026 tour at Montreux Jazz Festival. Cave and the band had performed the track a handful of times on previous tours but this marks the first appearance of Cinnamon Horses this tour. The Bad Seeds will back Cave on his European tour which has seen the Into My Arms hitmaker perform at Open’er Festival, Heartland Festival, and Metronome Festival.
Cave is set to perform a sold-out headline show in Brighton at the end of July and will also perform at Mad Cool Festival in Madrid. The band’s performance at Montreux Jazz Festival last night included some of Cave’s greatest hits, including The Mercy Seat and The Weeping Song. Also included was a rendition of a Cave and Warren Ellis track, Carnage.
A full setlist for Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ show at Montreux Jazz Festival can be found below.
- From Her to Eternity
- Train Long-Suffering
- Wild God
- O Children
- Tupelo
- Carnage
- Cinnamon Horses
- Joy
- Rings of Saturn
- Bright Horses
- Henry Lee
- The Mercy Seat
- The Weeping Song
- Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry
- Red Right Hand
- Jubilee Street
- Hollywood
- City of Refuge
- Wide Lovely Eyes
- Into My Arms
The tour comes as Cave previously confirmed he is working on lyrics to a new album. In The Red Hand Files, Cave wrote: “I have often spoken about procrastination as an obstacle to creativity, but perhaps, in my efforts to encourage people to discover their potential, I have not fully acknowledged just how challenging it can be.
“The fear and anxiety you are talking about is very real. I am working on lyrics for a new album right now and am also about to go on tour, and even though I’ve written hundreds of songs and performed countless times, the trepidation is acute, sometimes verging on paralysing.
“Our fears around starting something new, risky and exposed are genuine. But here lies the maddening paradox – these anxieties, the very things that prevent us from moving forward, are intrinsic to that motion. I was talking about this only recently with a ceramicist friend, Adam Silverman, and he said that I was ‘stirring the pot’ and, in doing so, revealing something of my soul.
“He said it was little wonder I felt scared. Of course, I know this to be true, I’ve been here countless times, but it’s good to be reminded, and his words calmed me down a little. I also know, in my heart, that if there is one thing more daunting than writing a song, it’s not writing one – and I think we can apply this to many things, a job left undone is its own torment, a dream unrealised, its own kind of hell.
“There is a unique joy, the deepest satisfaction and a kind of spiritual appeasement in knowing that something we have made, or worked on, means something to somebody else. We may need to leap through these hoops of fire, wrestling against forces that hold us back from reaching our potential. Yet, understanding that struggle energises the work itself, turning creativity into a beautiful war – perhaps the noblest contest of them all.”
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