Catharsis and revelations as Nick Cave enraptures Hanging Rock

MUSIC
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis ★★★★★
Hanging Rock, November 25

The last time Nick Cave toured Australia was in summer 2019, three years and a global pandemic ago. That tour was something of an oddity: a live version of his newsletter-cum-advice column The Red Hand Files, in which he thoughtfully, idiosyncratically answers questions about life, love, God, music and death from fans across the world. At the Sydney Opera House, interspersed by spare, piano versions of Bad Seeds songs, someone asked for advice on how to overcome a heroin addiction; someone else posed a question about cancel culture. Cave submitted himself to the whim of the audience. It was a fascinating, if not entirely satisfying show.

Nick Cave performing at Hanging Rock on Friday.Credit: Rick Clifford

Last night’s performance at Hanging Rock was a return to showmanship, to bombast. Like a preacher evangelising from a pulpit, Cave seemed determined to bring the audience with him on a journey of catharsis and revelation. His lyrics, soaked in sex and religious imagery, have always recognised the world in ecstatic terms – he described Night Raid, for example, as being about “a miracle on an atomic and cosmic level” – while remaining rooted in an awareness of shared suffering and the vagaries of human emotion. Love, lust, rage, despair, malice, heartache, exhaustion, joy: across a set list that reached from Carnage (2021) all the way back to The Good Son (1990), it’s hard to think of a feeling that was not represented.

If Cave was a preacher, then Bad Seed and long-time collaborator Warren Ellis was the show’s holy man. In contrast to Cave’s brooding intensity, Ellis brought a crackle of manic energy to the show. Whether lurching over a keyboard, brandishing a violin bow like a lightning rod, or playing the flute like a man possessed, his skill and charisma shone as bright as a beacon. Credit, too, to singers Wendi Rose, Janet Ramus and T. Jae Cole, and a backup band featuring Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood on bass and keys and Larry Mullins on drums, for providing the musical backbone of the evening.

From my place in the crowd, the show had a hungry, slightly unhinged energy: a small, grey-haired lady tried to fight a security guard, then everyone around her; a woman near me wept openly as the band performed White Elephant; on stage, Ellis curled around his violin like a contortionist mid-exorcism. The last few years haven’t been easy on anyone; for Cave, they’ve been harder than most. What doesn’t kill you just makes you crazier, he sings in Balcony Man. It felt particularly resonant.

Nick Cave’s performance at Hanging Rock invited the audience on a journey of catharsis. Credit: Rick Clifford

For much of the evening, Cave stuck to songs from Ghosteen and Carnage, with a nod here and there to fan favourites from his extensive back catalogue. Yet it was the recently released Hand of God that offered the most intensely incantatory moment – Cave delivered the kind of performance that raises an audience to its feet, calls them to the foot of the stage, delivers them to a mesmeric, hypnotic state. Above Hanging Rock, the stars came out one by one. Below, the band played deep into the night. A miracle on an atomic and cosmic level.

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