As dusk falls, the animals of Hanging Rock become curious onlookers. Kangaroos sit poised on the race track, watching banks of coaches draw in from neighbouring towns; rabbits leap for the cover of bushes and rosellas draw lines above our path on what has become a perfect spring evening.
Their presence is fitting, given all the creature cameos of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s set: a bird in a nest, horses with manes of fire, a roaming cougar, a reindeer stepping back into the woods. These avatars for grief and love help to spin a sense of wonder, were it really needed.
Cave has long been the stand-in for people with no religion. Secular folk, searching for meaning, find the answers not just in his albums (particularly since 1997’s The Boatman’s Call when he stopped concealing himself behind characters), but through his online Q&A The Red Hand Files and, more than anything else, the live show.
Tonight he appears – sunset to the left, mist to the right, rosy volcanic formation backdrop – and launches into Spinning Song. He’s largely pulling from the contemplative Ghosteen, an Elysian Fields of an album made with the Bad Seeds in 2019 which examines the grief of losing a child; and from Carnage, made with Warren Ellis in 2021 and seemingly designed for live sermonising.
Cave is in his usual black suit, and there’s Ellis, a prog-rock sage with flowing beard who dips between synth, violin and flute. They’re backed by drummer Larry Mullins and Radiohead bassist/keyboardist Colin Greenwood, but also by three glittery-robed backing singers who transport this evening into full-blown transcendence. This beneficent presence, of Wendi Rose, Janet Ramus and T Jae Cole, seems to ensure our safe passage through sorrowful moments such as Bright Horses. Their robes oscillate behind Cave as he sits at the piano like a silvery entity.
Strangely, we’re a pinchy little congregation at first. A lone woman who rises to her feet is castigated ferociously by another, heavily coiffured woman, who berates security to act and whips up some clapping when she succeeds. It’s a weird distillation of the huffy outrage that has typified the past few years, and at odds to the kindness emanating from the stage.
While Cave is looking a little more drawn, he’s growing ever more expansive, and his voice has never had so much range. Occasionally he’ll slip into character – on White Elephant, about the killing of George Floyd, he contorts his face with hatred as the backing singers shake their maracas, sweat on every brow; and he humours one murder ballad, Henry Lee, dueting languidly with Ramus, AKA British soul singer Cookie – but largely he is giving of himself. For the title track, Ghosteen, perhaps one of his most personal, a knot of lines appears at his brow. Waiting for You is stripped back to bare emotion.
The mood lightens with a T Rex cover, Cosmic Dancer (“pretty good for an English band”); Ellis playing the top line on his violin, rocking on his bum in his chair, legs in the air. Cave laughs before composing himself and continuing. Breathless gets the biggest cheer of the night so far, but Hand of God – perhaps about surrendering to our lack of control over the past few years – reaches fever pitch. There’s a mass exodus from the seats and a rush to the front. Cave is on his feet and sermonising to the pit, leading the delirious “hand of god” chant – kind of like Lord of the Flies’ “kill the pig, cut her throat, spill the blood” but in safer hands. I look around and, like everyone else, the coiffured complainer has surged forth, evidently having made her own hero’s journey tonight.
The encore is no mean offering, stretching long into the night. Among its moments, Hollywood builds to a foot-stomping crescendo, Cave leaning over the pit, playing outstretched hands like a theremin. The three-decades-old Weeping Song is transformed. Cave locks eyes with Ellis across the stage and the backing singers fast-clap between lines – leading the crowd to fall in – before Ellis ignites the whole joint with a violin solo. Into My Arms transports the faithful back into treasured memories, but newer converts have plenty to feast on.
The long journey home after may be beset with trials and tribulations, but the flood of chemicals won’t wear off any time soon. All rise.
