Nick Cave takes a break from the horror to duet with Kylie Minogue in London. SAM TAYLOR was there
THE moment is so perfect, it might have been choreographed. Nick Cave, rock’s prince of darkness, ambles on stage at London’s Brixton Academy and is suddenly caught in the spotlight’s glare. His knees buckle, he covers his face with his hands, then yells, in a broad Australian accent: “Can someone get me a drink?”
Blood or Foster’s, sir? Dressed in a cheap-looking silver-grey suit and white shirt, Cave no longer looks like the threatening, wasted star who slouched from the south 15 years ago in a cloud of sulphur and alcohol with post-punk band, The Birthday Party.
His black hair, once greasy and unkempt, is now receding at the temples, swept back in a womanly quiff. He is as skinny and ghoulish as ever, but slipped into self- parody several years ago. Mind you, this is probably a blessing; a 38-year-old father should not be singing about murdering women with any degree of sincerity.
In the landscapes of Cave’s songs, it is always night; animals howl, church bells toll and the moon glows unnaturally. There is always a woman — “wild feral stare, dark hair, winter lips as cold as stone” — with whom the singer is madly in love; but then something happens — “Well, I try, baby, I really do/ But I just err … ” — and, before you know it, the woman is covered in blood (cue vivid, poetic description of scarlet sheets) and not breathing any more. Thus the singer sinks into despair and self-loathing, doomed forever to live with the ghost of the girl he loved and killed.
For a few hours each night, Cave gets to act out these gruesome, misogynist, blues- inspired fantasies on stage. By the second song — the pounding, obsessional From Her to Eternity — the singer has stripped off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and is pouring with sweat. His body jerks around like a marionette manipulated by a drunk.
Cave’s band, The Bad Seeds, are an accomplished, macho bunch — all chiselled cheekbones and lacquered hair – — playing their instruments with casual swagger. The prowling, howling horror- movie soundtracks are built on Martyn P Casey’s relentlessly heavy basslines. Blixa Bargeld, wearing a black Homburg, looks like an emissary of the Devil, but can wring some beautiful, gentle noises from his guitar. Layers of piano and ghostly keyboards soften the ragged effect of the two drummers. But Cave’s possessed baritone is the focus — angry and hoarse on Loverman; desperately hollow on >From Her to Eternity; sweetly mournful on The Weeping Song.
Strange, then, that with so much drama and darkness in the air, the night can be stolen by a minuscule former soap star with negligible musical talent. Kylie is a weird phenomenon — so boyish and unappealing as Charlene in Tv’s Neighbours; so screechy and annoying as a fledgling pop star with the Stock Aitken Waterman hit factory in the Eighties; so transparently calculating in her Nineties raunchification … and yet we love her. She wears a black, knee-length dress, her hair wrapped in little buns like Bjsrk. By rights, this audience — all studded lips, leather jackets and tattoos — should despise her, but they react as though Bambi has come back to life.
She comes on for one song only — the lovely murder ballad, Where the Wild Roses Grow — but her presence reduces the brooding Cave to mush. They hug; he drapes an arm around her, a protective big brother twice her height. He sings about killing her, but looks suddenly like it would pain him to kill a fly. And Kylie sings her lines with such an affecting mix of innocence and sensuality: “They call me the wild rose/ Though my name is Eliza Day/ I know not why they call me that/ For my name is Eliza Day”. She skips off stage and there is a collective “aaaaaaah”. Then it’s back to the daily grind of chopping up black-haired women with a meat cleaver.