Wild God. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

This blog was in its second year when I wrote my very first Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds review. It was for 'Pushing The Sky Away'. All the albums since found their way here and so does 'Wild God'. Running a little behind with many important releases of the past month (holidays!), let alone the rest, Wild God only comes by today, more than two weeks after its release. The good news is, it was well worth the wait.

Wild God is a masterpiece. No more and no less. The Bad Seeds are back in action and a host of singers are accompanying Cave. It may all go over the top here and there but in a grand style and the self-assured confidence of doing the right thing. Coming a little after the pack, I noticed that the album is controversial. Some fans of old do not want anything to do with it and point back to albums from around 1990, while other, old and newer fans hail it as a masterpiece. There is little middle ground it seems concerning Wild God. Belonging to the latter fans, I may come to the conclusion soon this is Nick Cave's best.

I bought Wild God on Friday 6 September and started listening after having drunk two pre-dinner dark Kasteel beers, with the alcohol kicking in in the most pleasant of ways. My wife was cooking and didn't need assistance, so I was sitting in the middle of my couch right in between the speakers. My eyes were closed and the music louder than I would usually play it. The music, then still unknown to me, took me away across space and time to another world, somewhere between here and there. Enraptured, moving along to every chord change and being caressed by the music and elaborate singing.

It wasn't just me. At some point my love asked me "who is this? It is so immensely beautiful" and wanted me to play it again over dinner.

So, here is the man who heard Cave's debut solo album in the mid 80s and hated it. I could not listen to it beyond the second song. I wonder if the female friend still has it. We never talk about music any more. I never bothered again with Nick Cave, until 2013 that is.

But what makes Wild God so good? Not the joy for life Nick Cave said he's found again and this album is about. I have a hard time hearing it. No, it seems that he has somehow tapped into something eternal. Something that allows him to create heavenly choir singing (by Double R Collective) over songs that are not so much different from what I'm hearing for eleven years now. 'Joy' could be on 'Ghosteen' for example. Several songs are just bigger, somewhat wilder, looser, but undeniably Nick Cave. The Bad Seeds are only there when he needs them. Warren Ellis still seems most important and certainly in the songs that are very atmospheric, like 'Joy'.

The single 'Wild God' is an excellent example of that loose wildness, while in 'Frogs' we get that touch of heaven on earth. If ever heavenly choirs were caught on record it is here in the background singing on 'Frogs'. What the shepherds might have heard in Bethlehem after Christ's birth. I'm sure I'm not supposed to write this, but that is how the singing comes across to me.

The looseness in the intro to 'Final Rescue Attempt'. That riff played on a sonically treated keyboard just meanders like a brook through a forest, small barrages and all. The way the song progresses is so beautiful. Again a touch of heaven and greatness was granted to Nick Cave c.s. "And I will always love you", sings Cave. On the basis of Wild Gods' songs I will always be your fan. And it just goes on. The intro to 'Conversion' simply takes me away once again. This music touches me at a level that is close to religion. I have totally surrendered myself to it, so it seems. Those two beers seem to have prepared me for a near mystical experience. My life is so much better because of it. Great beer by the way.

Wout de Natris - van der Borght