{"id":87885,"date":"2024-08-29T20:29:08","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T18:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essentiallypop.com\/epop\/?p=87885"},"modified":"2024-09-02T21:28:54","modified_gmt":"2024-09-02T19:28:54","slug":"review-of-wild-god-album-by-nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/essentiallypop.com\/epop\/2024\/08\/review-of-wild-god-album-by-nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds\/","title":{"rendered":"TRUE FAITH – Is ‘Wild God’ Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds’ Most Religious Album Yet?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The first thing you notice about Nick Cave and the The Bad Seeds’ 18th studio album is just how bloody BIG it sounds.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

After the knotty, experimental and frankly grief-stricken trilogy of Skeleton Tree<\/a><\/em>, Ghosteen<\/a><\/em> and Carnage<\/em>, the tethers are off. Wild God<\/em> is the sound of a band unleashed – with choirs, orchestration, the whole kitchen sink, thrown in.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Cave has gone for broke on this one and the result is epic, grandiose, but above all joyful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bad Seeds’ are back with a vengeance, drummer Thomas Wydler <\/strong>recovering from illness to add a new layer of power to this swirling, tumultuous, behemoth of an album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Cave himself says: “It bursts out of the speaker…..there\u2019s no fucking around with this record. When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves you. I love that about it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Wild God <\/em>cover art<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cave’s difficult and tragic last decade has been well documented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arthur, one of his twin sons with wife Susie, died aged just 15, from a cliff fall in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long-serving Bad Seeds’ keyboard player Conway Savage <\/strong>succumbed to a brain tumour just three years later, while the eldest of his four sons Jethro, died aged 31 in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that pain naturally took its toll on the singer, but Wild<\/em> God <\/em>sees Cave and his band emerging from the darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a strong sense of change, of evolution, in the songs, which are delivered with a vigour, confidence and yes, faith not heard from in a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Side project Grinderman<\/em><\/strong> aside, it’s arguably Cave’s rockiest album since Warren Ellis <\/strong>took over as his main songwriting collaborator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s also arguably his most religious record to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cave has both confronted and embraced religious tropes and iconography throughout his career, but seldom has the gospel been delivered with such exuberance and glee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the aptly titled Joy<\/strong><\/em>, he sings of being visited by a “flaming boy”, could it be Arthur? “A ghost in giant sneakers, laughing stars around his head”<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The apparition urges the angst-ridden narrator off his knees “We\u2019ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy<\/em>,” the boy says, virtually summing up the whole record in a single line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Nick
Nick Cave print by Ian Allen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lavish orchestration abounds, along with sumptuous choruses, not least on the title track with its thunderous call to “Bring your spirit down”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now well into his 60s Cave also, perhaps, takes a chance to poke fun at his former hellraising image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was rape and pillage in the retirement village.<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s day-glo, psychedelic, imagery in Cinnamon Horses <\/em>as the titular beasts stride through “turpentine trees” and “dance beneath a strawberry moon,” galloping acoustic guitars spurring them along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That sense of change, of things being worked through, is evident on tracks like Conversion<\/i><\/b> <\/em>where an old god is transformed by the spirt of “a girl across the street with long dark hair”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course it’s not all hearts and flowers. The world of Wild God <\/em>is not without its violence, darkness and fury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The majestic Frogs <\/em><\/strong>opens with a brother’s head being crushed by a bone, while the world seethes with angry voices in Joy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the overwhelming mood is of positivity, the frogs literally making a leap of faith in the Sunday rain, the Christ-like figure emerging from the tomb bringing “Good tidings to all things” in As The Waters Cover The Sea<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even opener <\/em>Song of the Lake <\/em><\/strong>is curiously uplifting, its lavish arrangement, belying the world weary narrator, who’s content to let it all go “Never mind, never mind”<\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Repetition, the preacher’s friend, is used to great affect on songs like Final Rescue Attempt <\/em><\/strong>and Conversion<\/em><\/strong>, while choirs of backing singers compound the sense of religious euphoria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Touchingly, Cave also finds time to pay tribute to another dearly departed former Bad Seed, Anita Lane<\/strong> – the longtime girlfriend with whom he wrote From Her To Eternity<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The song features clips from a phone call between the two, as she chuckles about old times, Cave’s enduring affection made clear in the song’s title O WOW O WOW (How Wonderful She Is)<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the man once known as the Prince of Darkness to uncork such an extravagant hymn to positivity is a typically audacious move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wild God<\/em><\/strong> may lose Nick Cave some fans, but it will undoubtedly win him many more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n