Boom Crash Opera, Nick Barker @ The Gov, Adelaide 10/10/2025
Friday night at The Gov was the perfect lead in to the weekend with Boom Crash Opera who were in town celebrating their Hands Up In The Air – The Singles Tour from a highly esteemed career with support from elder statesman Nick Barker. The set list reflects an abundance of riches loaded with great songs that still stack up and are just as relevant now as they were when they originally came out.
Nick Barker was a solid opener kicking off with Hearts And Minds but it was the gem of a quote that got this crowd on side. “Just what you want, some fuckwit from Melbourne with an acoustic guitar, throw a rock and you’ll hit one”. The Tim Rogers cover of I Live Under The Flightpath was well done and there were a few gems in there with the likes of Show You The Scar and Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me). It was great to see Chris Harris (aka “Houndog”) from The Reptiles on harmonica. There was a reflection of celebrating Dale Ryder’s thirtieth birthday here in Adelaide “four hundred years ago”. A crowd member yelled out for Timebomb getting the response “it sounds shit with harmonica” opting to finish on Never Easy.
There’s plenty of admiration for Boom Crash Opera in Adelaide and when you put on a killer show of this calibre why wouldn’t you keep coming back for more. Incredible that ‘The Crashies’ are back in Adelaide for the third time in seven months and another big crowd experienced another great show delivered with clinical precision. There was no dialing it in or going through the motions either with the band looking and sounding fantastic. Forty years strong with no end in sight either with a back catalogue that stacks up with the best of them being just as relevant now as they were when they came out. It was no different this time playing a killer show filled with plenty of highlights and it would be difficult to find someone who didn’t enjoy that. Whilst it was very much about all the singles released over the journey it was still great to be able to hear some of the lesser lights that don’t get played much these days.
Walking out to the their theme song These Here Are Crazy Times the band were on ripping through openers Great Wall and Gimme. Peter Farnan said that they would be “exhuming some bodies, some are a bit stinky and if they say remember this one they are speaking to ourselves”. There was a great energy running through classics City Flat and Dancing In The Storm then exhuming Holy Water which had not been played live since 1991. Talk About It was also one of those other tunes that rarely played which got a look in before introducing word of the night “libations” or a “polite way of saying sucking piss”.
It was the set staples and those iconic hits of Her Charity, Get Out Of The House, Bettadaze, The Best Thing and Onion Skin where the band shines with their abundance of riches and if you throw in their new single “which is only six months old” in Latest Hustle proves they are unbeatable. The encore was the icing on the cake for which already an awesome night with This Isn’t Love and the anthemic Hands Up In The Air topping things off perfectly. Looking forward to their return, count me in!
Live Review By Rob Lyon