I can’t help but think of Nicholas Hope in Bad Boy Bubby every time I watch a video of Nick Cave performing.
The oddly obscure “classic” is the kind of hard-watch that leaks from the more unflinching corners of the Australian psyche. But unlike similarly disquieting films, such as Snowtown and Picnic At Hanging Rock, Bubby’s heightened optimism, amidst a backdrop of tremendous trauma (not to mention developmental catastrophe), keeps Rolf de Heer’s 1993 from sinking under the weight of its own despair.
Much of Bad Boy Bubby’s colour comes from Hope’s freedom when performing on stage. The film’s long-short is that he was raised underground by an abusive mother and developed severe mental defects as a result. His eventual introduction into society, as an adult, goes about as well as you’d expect, until he finds passion and purpose in performing as the lead singer of a scrappy rock band.
The way he performs, like some kind of secular priest conducting an electrifying sermon, gives Bubby a largeness that wasn’t possible in his subterranean prison. The titular character goes from curiously – innocently – suffocating cats with Glad Wrap to sanctified preacher man, orating the virtues of scruffy pub-rock punk through the seedy streets of early 90s Adelaide.
Watch some old clips of Nick Cave performing as The Birthday Party’s enigmatic lead, and you’ll see glimpses of Hope’s role. He’s staggering around, seemingly possessed as he layers over jagged, pointy rock n roll, slowly merging the two as if each song is a clash between heaven and hell. Watch a Cave concert these days, and it’s not all that different; he just has the performance perfected to the nth degree.
Because this man performs in every sense of the word. It’s like he knows the exact weight of each word he has written down and plays accordingly, stretching and silencing, mumbling and shouting, showing equal parts restraint and aggression as he transforms each of these songs into Shakespearean tragedies.
That’s been his style forever, but never has it felt more urgent and symbolic now that Wild God has melted into Cave’s wider discography. The 2024 record, one of deep spiritual redemption, is a constant punch-on between grief and joy.
It’s a conflict that Cave communicates beautifully on stage, mirroring the intensity of songs like “Tupelo” and “O Children” and then frequently running up to grasp for fans in the front row, holding their hands as if human touch was his way of desperately recharging his batteries after each song.
That’s Cave’s live schtick: rock n roll with the reverence of gospel and the theatricality of Shakespeare. It’s a wholly unique, addictive style that one could watch for hours on end.
Cave’s roots lie in the church, and he sounds naturally at one with his small but powerful choir. Warren Ellis, constantly fiddling away to the side of the stage, adds an impenetrable wail when needed. Mesmerising in tone, he reminds me slightly of Jonsi (Sigur Rós) in the way that he can instantly heighten the moment with a sound so arrestingly simple.
Nick’s generous set rewarded patience by squeezing a lot of crowd-pleasers towards the end, such as “Red Right Hand,” “The Weeping Song,” and “Into My Arms”.
But such moments didn’t land half as well as Nick’s lesser-appreciated songs. “Joy” took the crowd through an entire fun of emotions as even Nick started sniffling from the piano. “Conversion”, which could just as easily have been a Kanye West song, is a big, ambitious breakdown of contemporary gospel. “Papa, Won’t Leave You Henry” shows us that Cave can lift a song from the early 90s and still make it sound like it was written yesterday.
The generous set-list, counting 23 songs, took around 2.5 hours to get through. And by the end, it felt like Nick Cave was trying to push us towards something much bigger than himself. It’s been a few years since Cave stumbled back into his Christian roots, and it seems spiritualism has reshaped the way he approaches his songs live. It’s a tremendously cathartic thing to watch.
