Photo by Daniel Boud NICK CAVE & WARREN ELLIS With Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs Sydney Opera House, December 8 A low humming drone of strings over which the solemn suggestion of pain was reflected in the gaunt face and hollowed eyes of Guy Pearce, before it was made “real” in the rage of the horns and timpani. The undercurrent of warmth and connection, even under a foretaste of tension, played through a man and boy trudging on and on across a lands

Today the new Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds album, Ghosteen, is reviewed on this page. It is an album whose emotional landscape and musical explorations can best be understood by knowing not just his personal history but the context in which this music appears. Vital in that is the 2016 album Skeleton Tree. NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS Skeleton Tree (Kobalt) Searching for one, wrapping-it-all-up, telling-us-exactly-how-he-feels meaning in this album, the first released by Nick Cave

NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS Ghosteen (Kobalt) It’s true of the petty and ordinary just as it is true of something great, which Ghosteen undeniably is, that timing and context matter. As much and sometimes more so than meaning. Or we use them to give meaning at the very least. Nick Cave & The Bad Seed’s 2016 album, Skeleton Tree, was not “about” the death of Nick Cave’s son, Arthur, though it emerged in the months after that devastating event. As Cave would explain — though not

CONVERSATIONS WITH NICK CAVE Sydney Opera House, January 9 “We talk about it all night long/We define our moral ground/But when I crawl into your arms/Everything comes tumbling down.” The Ship Song On the perfectly palindromic night of 9/1/19, it was clear that emotionally and musically, as much as numerically, with Nick Cave the beginning was in the end and the end was also the beginning. This unusual and unusually frank blend of very funny chat show, live performance and in

There’s a new Beatles box set. Of course there’s a new Beatles box set. And that certainty is not just because it’s the 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Beatles fans are a licence to print money because we – yes, we: I’ve been buying Beatles reissues and box sets since 1985 and have all the albums in at least six iterations – not only have our numbers swell each generation but are eager to spend on new versions, including sets such as t

NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS Enmore Theatre, December 3, 2003 It was a dark and stormy night with thunderclaps that rocked you on your feet, cascading torrents that could sweep you up and deposit you elsewhere and frequent flashes of lightning that illuminated and terrified at the same time. The air was ripe with a palpable feel of senses working overtime, of physical response, of, well, sexuality. And apparently outside the Enmore Theatre the weather was pretty volatile too.

An album forged from grief by an internationally renowned songwriter, a record made for $1000 by self-described “scummy little punks”, and a sonically complex hip-hop album more than 15 years in the making will compete for this year’s prestigious Australian Music Prize. The Shortlist for the 12th AMP, whose prize of $30,000 makes it the country’s richest cash reward for an album, features nine acts almost as diverse as the Australian music industry. The best known of the cont

NICK CAVE ICC Sydney Theatre, January 20 When they go low, we go high. Or maybe, we’re not that bad, really. Not all of us. There’s proof. In the encore, after taking an audience request for the febrile, resentful Jack The Ripper (“I’ve got a woman, she strikes me down with a fist of lead”) and silencing any thought of audience chatter with what might be the flipside – or twisted extension - to Jack The Rippper, the leering, murderous Stagger Lee (“It’s plain to see I’m a

On Nick Cave, the Bad Seeds and things unsaid. JOY, PAIN, LOSS AND THE BONDS OF FRIENDSHIP “I have to say it’s so beautiful to see Nick performing again, during these rehearsals. The last week has just been such an absolute joy to see him find his voice. It’s been absolutely beautiful.” Warren Ellis, violinist for, co-writer of soundtracks with, collaborator, facilitator, bandmate and friend of Nick Cave, isn’t pretending there’s nothing unusual about Cave’s return to live pe

It is a pretty good year when Nick Cave’s intense, deeply emotional – though never easily categorised as “sad” – and wholly satisfying Skeleton Tree has to settle for #11 in the top 20 albums of the year. It’s keeping good company though, with the gentle but persistent piano work of Sophie Hutchings and the anything but gentle reportage of P J Harvey affecting works in their own way, and Rokia Traore, balancing pointed commentary and elegance, a quiet achiever. Weirdly, King

Nick Cave SKELETON TREE (Kobalt) Searching for one, wrapping-it-all-up, telling-us-exactly-how-he-feels meaning in this album, the first released by Nick Cave since the death of his son last year, is an understandable, albeit reflexive, response. This is an album that in the end connects more deeply than just about anything he’s written and as it marks us, we will seek to name that mark. And we will jump on a line such as “You turn, you turn, you kneel, lace up his shoes your