This is Nick Cave at his transcendent, heartbreaking best

Nick Cave
State Theatre, 29 April
Reviewed by SHAMIM RAZAVI
★★★★
That a sanction arsenic large arsenic Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood doesn’t adjacent get a billing arsenic Nick Cave’s accompanist successful this “solo” circuit tells you thing of Cave’s presumption arsenic nationalist treasure. The information the amusement would person been improved without the talented Greenwood tells you everything other you request to know.

Greenwood is much effect than cause, but it is nary coincidence that the occasions erstwhile helium steps backmost and leaves Cave and soft to themselves are the moments that genuinely transcend. Tellingly, it is the worldly champion suited to this stripped-back format – The Mercy Seat, The Weeping Song, Into My Arms – connected which Cave has the assurance to genuinely alert solo.

Nick Cave lived up to his presumption arsenic a nationalist surviving treasure.Credit: Edwina Pickles

Ever the generous collaborator, the solo billing becomes ever much inaccurate successful the encores arsenic Beth Orton joins the boys for a astonishment spine-tingling instrumentality connected The Ship Song, which – unneurotic with his heartbreaking endless repetition of the exhortation to “just breathe” successful the acheronian astatine the extremity of I Need You – is the bereaved begetter astatine his astir exposed.

Cave’s caller unrecorded appearances person spanned from chat show, via lockdown intensity to revivalist religiosity, and contiguous we get a spot of each three. For the chat, helium lingers connected the stories revealed by his songs.

We larn that Cave himself is the narcissistic protagonist successful Stranger than Kindness, which he acknowledges arsenic “the jewel successful the Bad Seeds’ crown”, adjacent if it was penned by his ex-wife Anita Lane. That helium is doomed by its brilliance to support performing it makes her revenge each the much sweet.

Likewise, devotees whitethorn already cognize the conception of Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry, but it is shocking to beryllium reminded that the macabre communicative of “warm arterial spray” and babies calved without a encephalon was primitively a lullaby for Cave’s ain newborn.

Perhaps helium couldn’t grip 2 hours of afloat acheronian intensity. Perhaps we couldn’t. What we get alternatively is simply a stroll done a flâneur’s songbook. Implausibly, brilliantly, precocious play Cave is each emotion and levity – and that we surely tin handle.

Nick Cave plays the State Theatre connected April 30 and May 5–7, and the ICC Sydney Theatre 3 May