The Many Acts of Nick Cave

Why we can’t get enough of his gospel.

Nick Cave on Bella Freud’s podcast couch.

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“I always wear a suit. When I wake up in the morning I put a suit on.”—Nick Cave 

We’ve been described as a surf media brand for people who probably listen to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. You may recognize that statement because we use it as our bio on this very Substack. It probably confuses a lot of people. But it makes sense to us and you if you’re here you likely “get it”, but I wanted to take a quick moment to explain what exactly I might mean by that.

I believe the simplest way to put it is that Inherent Bummer is itself a point of differentiation. We are comfortable in uncomfortable situations. We can jump from one-foot slop to perfect surf — similarly happy in both. We can watch videos of Gerr and Bruce Irons in the desert reconnecting after 20 years like it was yesterday and understand why it’s important as well as vids of the beautiful French wanderer Juliette Lacome’s latest surf video in Bali and an avant-thrash vid by artist and surfer/skaterJesse Guglielmana and do so between fittings for our new Dries Van Noten suits. Our existence in the surf landscape is odd enough to work. Too small to fail but capable of total domination. 

Yes, we surf. But we tend to bring things into the water that maybe don’t belong there. Suits. Nick Cave. Art. Design. Music. Obscure references. Literature. An appreciation of aesthetics as well as the destruction of aesthetics as long as it’s in the name of beauty. And that allows us some element of credibility and freedom I suppose. There aren’t many offerings with the ability to run in these shadows like we do. We have a history of this sort of thing. 

Nick Cave, especially in his later life, has come to represent points of differentiation as well. Unafraid to be himself through radical reinvention and stubborn and honest beliefs and contradictions. He articulates these differentiations in a poetically plain and beautiful way — illustrating complex arguments and theories with the subtlety of holding hands with a child.