By A.D. Amorosi

You had to get past the fact that the PLUG Independent Music Awards was there to “honor the independent music community and its fans who now represent a $3 billion industry with over 30% of the U.S. music market” and had all the flat-screen graphic floss to prove it.

And you had to get past a room full of bloggerites with weird beardo half-scraggle and the low energy those same sorts had when it came to digging the night’s acts.
And you had to get past the lousy sound of Terminal 5’s three floors – even though the empanadas on that third floor of those were supposedly the hit of the party. (I haven’t eaten since 1996. I wouldn’t know).

And even if you could manage to pay attention to each way-rushed act’s very few songs beyond the chatty beer-boozy Mexican-noshing crowd, you found out that Jose Gonzales – who you normally thought of as subtle and smart – could still hold his own in the humble strumming department despite the noise. But that he sounded like just-barely-less-shrill Harry Chapin this night. Maybe I should’ve had an empanada.

You had to get past all that.

And a cue-card-reading mostly un-jokey host Patton Oswalt.

And an absolutely awful formless performance from The Forms. And Annie Clark’s St. Vincent at its most noisily dynamic and gorgeously majestic (fast becoming, she is, pop’s most formidable femme presence). And a precocious Dizzee Rascal at his angled rapping grime-breast-beating best.

Why?

To get to the other side: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds in their only (so far) performance in the U.S. in 2008.

As the winner of the PLUG Impact Award – a totem that Oswalt described as “a butt-plug designed by David Lynch” – Cave rushed past the gift, accepting it with quiet un-smiling glee.

As the icon winning that award, Cave was (and is now as an artist) in his hard-nosed prime via his Bad Seeds at their psychedelic induced skuzziest and the skank-noise blues of 2007s Grinderman.

Having witnessed Cave’s lean mean Bad Seeds mainframe Grinderman rock virile-ly before White Stripes at Madison Square Garden, it wasn’t impossible to see how far the rotten apple’s fallen from the tree. Splintered to a few Seeds (Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, Jim Sclavunos) Grinderman and its “Get it On” was clean raw punkish blues. His expanded Seeds then follow that lead with the cowbell slapping, organ grinding, SanFran-cycling psychedelic bliss as its lead on “Dig Lazarus Dig” and “Midnight Man.”

Gone was the moist Moorish ambience and the trembling dramatic sway of Cave-lore of yore (musically, vocally) only to be replaced by a tactic cackle from Cave the singer, fronting the boys in the band through the party-ball chorus of “I want you to beg.” Cave’s characters are still poetic and damaged and romantic and violent. They just dispense with their activities faster. Whether strapped into a guitar or jutting forth to strike a keyboard’s ivory, Cave leads the Seeds through the revved-up “Cracked Actor”-ish stomp of “We Call Upon the Author to Explain” with his long limbs a swiftly streaking blur once popping past the sleeves on his French cuff shirt. As he leans into the keys and croons through the fire, he becomes a mad Jerry Lee Stagger Lee Lewis: “I feel like a vacuum cleaner. I’m a sucker. Motherfucker,” goes his plea.

Even when Cave & Co. slow things down to a sensuous Isaac Hayes-like roll (“Moonland”), Nick’s icy tong whisper on the finality of a line like “I’m not your favorite lover” feels crisper than in the past with his Seeds more sympathetic than ever to his reedy pleas and the way they course through Bad’s violin kicking/bass thumping/drum flailing/conga flowing focus.

Throughout this slender display, Cave has never sounded more vital and crucial – a veteran but not a vet, if you know what I mean. Even older material such as the spook-housed “Red Right Hand” tingles as it becomes a skanky ska-synth breakdown with its noisy samples at its bridge, striking like lighting. The energy of Cave’ set was so far and away the most awe-inspiring moment of the night – it didn’t seem like it was happening at the same time and place as the rest of the awards.

But the empanadas, on the other hand…