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5
MUSIC
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
«Wild God»
Play It Again Sam
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Nick Cave releases a new album just weeks before he takes the stage again at Oslo Spektrum. And for the first time since tragedy struck him and his family, we sense a glimmer of light that isn’t pitch-dark at its core.
This contributes to making «Wild God» on a different scale than anything he has created before, a handful of songs that draw inspiration from the innermost chambers of the heart, where difficult emotions are magnified and harmonies find resonance whether in sorrow, pain, or the all-encompassing longing to feel joy again.
In the song «Joy», Nick Cave sings about waking one morning «with the blues all around my head, I felt like someone in my family was dead». For him, it’s not just a bad dream, but a reality after his son Arthur fell to his death at 15 years old in 2015. This has affected Cave to the extent that he has completely changed as an artist. In 2022, his eldest son also passed away at the age of 31, under very different circumstances and as a result of a troubled life.
Death notwithstanding, the former reclusive and arrogant doomsday figure has become an artist that radiates the very essence of life itself. In music, on the blog Red Right Hand, in films and through tours where he engages with fans in conversation. And of course on the concert stage, right at the edge of the platform as he is nourished by the warmth from the audience. This is what we witnessed at the Øya Festival in 2022. He and his loyal Bad Seeds have navigated through the powerful albums «Skeleton Tree» and «Ghosteen». But now the transformation is also coming to the record.
There is a heartfelt sincerity to «Wild God» which, in many ways, aligns with a prevailing spirit of the times, where it is once again permissible to wear emotions on one’s sleeve. But few others than Cave would get away with such grandiose soul and crooner-rock of this sort, where in the title track, he states that «It starts with a heart, with a heart, with a heart, with a heart».
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There is a swaying movement in the arrangements on «Wild God» and in the way Cave uses his voice and phrasing. Especially on the first two tracks, the near-religious «Songs Of The Lake» and the title track, one of the album’s very strongest and brightest, where he returns to the themes from «Jubilee Street» on the «Push The Sky Away» album and sings about the once wild god who now rediscovers wildness.
These two songs introduce the same longing movements in a musical sense that he demonstrates during concerts, as he leans as far out as gravity allows and reaches for someone or something, after the warmth he receives from the audience who listens, shares, and reaches back. When the chorus in «Wild God» explodes and the refrain lifts, Cave is in a place he has hardly been before, in ecstasy that has until now been reserved for concerts. The Bad Seeds, with guitarist, fiddler, noise master, and Cave’s co-creator Warren Ellis at the forefront, hammer away, passionately and tightly while the choir fills large spaces throughout the album.
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Yet it is the song «Joy» that becomes the sacred turning point, a key song both in title and content. It is not only the album’s longest, but also the one that gives sorrow another hue in terms of mood. Cave sings about a burning ghost of a boy who visits him at his bedside, telling him that there has been enough sorrow, and now it is time for joy. «We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy» sings Cave, echoing Charles Dickens’ haunted Christmas tale «Being a Ghost Story of Christmas», while the choir sways and moves in the background like spectral wings under the ceiling like black ravens.
«Wild God» is heart and pain, it is grand sadness and drama blown up on large canvases with vivid allegory. When he dramatically fades out in «Final Rescue Attempt» with «I will always love you», it’s not hard to think who could be the addressee. «Conversation» has a touch of Michael Kiwanuka in the way the choir is arranged, but Cave’s own singing and voice punctuate what is blossoming too beautifully.
«Cinnamon Horses» follows as a Solomon-like song about the shifts of love, with deep horns and again choruses that take us into the black «Long Dark Night» before we are reminded of death again in «O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)» written about and for Anita Lane, Cave’s old friend, collaborator, and former lover who passed away in 2021.
She is particularly remembered for the album «Dirty Pearl», but was also central to Cave’s first band The Birthday Party and contributed lyrics to some of his early solo songs, such as the classic «From Her To Eternity». «O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)» is a beautiful song, full of warmth and also laughter when Lane’s own voice in a phone recording causes the entire song to crackle and let in the light.
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It is the ghosts that shine the brightest on «Wild God», an album that will stand out as one of Nick Cave’s true masterpieces. The inner voice is so strong that everything he can muster of human warmth and love for those he has lost will be contagious to the listener. The album’s core consisting of «Joy», the heartfelt ballads «Final Rescue Attempt» and «Conversation», as well as «Cinnamon Horses», goes straight into a heavenly glowing songbook for eternity – «touched by the spirit and touched by the flame» – as he himself sings. It is time for joy.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds play at Oslo Spektrum on October 2.