Banal and profound, bent and beautiful: Nick Cave & Warren Ellis at Edinburgh Playhouse reviewed

Nick Cave has always been drawn to parable and fable, but more than ever these days he is engaged in the necessary work of mining magic from the base metal of day-to-day existence. The key lines in this show came early, during ‘Bright Horses’: ‘We’re all so sick and tired of seeing things as they are,’ Cave sang in that hollow, sorrowful baritone. ‘This world is plain to see/ It don’t mean we can’t believe in something.’

Cave’s recent songs have a terrible and powerful context: the death of his teenage son, Arthur, in 2015. As an artist he has confronted this personal tragedy side on, acknowledging its profound impact without letting it overwhelm his writing. Through allusion and allegory, Cave has drawn on pain, confusion and grief to create work that feels true, transcendent and stirringly alive.

It has led to a transformative shift in the way he interacts with his audience. During the opening ‘Spinning Song’ he whispered repeatedly ‘I love you’, waving the sentiment to the four corners of the theatre. It was pure showbiz, yet also not. Cave is out here because he needs to be. Shaking off post-Covid ring-rust is one imperative — ‘We’re trying to learn how to be a band again,’ he told us — but the need for human connection felt raw and urgent, and moving to witness.

Cave has drawn on pain, confusion and grief to create work that feels true, transcendent and stirringly alive

He is undertaking this tour with Warren Ellis, right-hand man in Cave’s longstanding band, the Bad Seeds. The pair were ably supported by multi-instrumentalist Johnny Hostile and three terrific backing vocalists. At times, when the latter’s soulful counterpoints combined with Cave’s quasi-religious fervour, it felt a little like Bob Dylan’s gospel-era output transported to a point far beyond mere salvation.