Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds played Preston Park on Friday 31 July, their only advertised UK show of 2026, and the night turned on a single sentence. Nine songs in, Cave told the crowd he had a guest. Then he said the name — Kylie Minogue — and 30,000 people came apart.
They sang “Where the Wild Roses Grow”, the 1995 Murder Ballads duet, together for the first time since 2018. Minogue wore a white lace dress embroidered with wild roses, made by Susie Cave, whose label The Vampire’s Wife has dressed half of Brighton’s more theatrical weddings. “I am so happy to be here, always,” she said. She left the stage declaring her undying, unwavering love for him.
Cave, by most accounts, looked more delighted than anybody. He handed her most of the vocal and took the smaller part — the murderer, narrating what he did to her.
A Day, Not a Gig
The evening was the end of something that had been running since morning.
At 11am, eight and a half hours before doors, the Bad Seeds squeezed onto the roof of Resident Music on Kensington Gardens and played four songs to whoever happened to be walking past. They opened with “Train Long-Suffering”, a track from 1985’s The Firstborn Is Dead that went unplayed for 27 years before this year’s European tour revived it, and covered T. Rex’s “Cosmic Dancer”. The street filled within minutes. Cave thanked what he called the best record shop in the world, and it was hard to argue with the sentiment or the setting.
The support bill was genuinely strong rather than dutiful: Warmduscher, then English Teacher — whose singer Lily Fontaine told the crowd it was the biggest they had ever played to — followed by Cate Le Bon and the Flaming Lips, with Wayne Coyne handing the microphone to several small children before starting.
The Set
Cave opened with “Get Ready for Love” and “From Her to Eternity”, pulled “Train Long-Suffering” out again, and worked through “Wild God”, “O Children”, “Tupelo”, “Carnage”, “Joy” and “Rings of Saturn” before Minogue arrived. After she left came “The Mercy Seat”, “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry”, “Red Right Hand”, “The Weeping Song”, “Jubilee Street” and “Hollywood”. The encore was “City of Refuge”, “Wide Lovely Eyes” and, alone at the piano, “Into My Arms”. He asked everyone to sing it with him. They did.
“Jubilee Street” landed differently here, and Cave said as much — the song takes its name from the unremarkable road behind the Jubilee Library, which he turned into something considerably darker in 2012 than anyone who parks there would recognise.
The Brighton Connection
This is Cave’s city in a way that goes beyond a nice line in a press release. He lived here for more than twenty years and left for Los Angeles in 2015 after the death of his son Arthur. Choosing Preston Park for his only UK date of the year, and spending the whole day in Brighton rather than arriving for a soundcheck, read as something closer to a thank-you than a booking.
Preston Park is not a natural concert bowl. It is 63 acres of Victorian park with an awkward shape, and the sightlines suffered for it — a steady drift of people moving between corners looking for somewhere the stage was actually visible. The city’s usual questions applied about getting several thousand people back down the hill afterwards on a Friday night.
Nobody much seemed to mind. It was the right band in the right place, on the one night of the year they were playing here.
Related Reading
- What’s On in Brighton This Weekend: Pride, Live Music, Comedy and Where to Eat
- Brighton Pride 2026 — Diana Ross, RAYE, RuPaul & Jessie J
- Events in Brighton: Upcoming Brighton Events 2026
