“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

Kemp Town’s Nick Cave, spotted in Tesco, seen taking out a speed camera with his Jag on the seafront, could be sticking his feet up and letting the black hair dye grow out.

Instead he takes Marcel Proust’s old philosophy to new levels.

Thirty years and 14 albums yet his furious creativity brews faster. Who else is the business has been so consistent for so long?

His fans know it. As he prowled the front of the stage like a caged panther eyeballing his prey, they hung on his every word; his arms, legs and heart, too. Anything to touch the man from Sin City.

Jubilee Street, a screaming riot picking through the bones of his adopted home, started the assault. A snarling Abattoir Blues, “woke up this morning with a frappuccino in my hand,” had the musical missionary in a black silk suit lunging, kicking the air, keeping that spidery body in shape.

Then came the highlight, From Her To Eternity, with its industrial decay, before the bloodshed and menace of Stagger Lee, two bookends to the catalogue.

At one point side-kick Warren Ellis rammed his bow down the back of his top like Robin Hood, turned violin to guitar, before going electric to beef the sound up further.

Another new Brightonian, Barry Adamson, back with Cave, added more layers. He became a second drummer to drive home The Mercy Seat.

“The best things we don’t understand,” said Cave before playing Anita Lane’s Stranger Than Kindness from Your Funeral… My Trial. “This is one of them.”