Nick Cave and the Unhealthy Seeds’ ‘Wild God’ is All About Pleasure

Nick Cave has spent the final six years in dialog. By means of his Pink Hand Recordsdata Web site and his touring Q&A collection, the 66-year-old punk-rock icon has waxed poetic together with his followers about grief, growing old, and forgiveness. And after dropping the Unhealthy Seeds’ final file, the devastating Ghosteen, in 2019, it appears he’s prepared to speak about one thing that’s sadly uncommon in these instances: pleasure. 

On the band’s newest, Wild God Cave performs preacher, congregation, and god over the course of a collection of songs which are in equal measure elegiac and ecstatic. That includes sweeping strings (partially courtesy of bassist Colin Greenwood and guitarist Luis Almau), spiderweb keys, and Cave’s signature honeyed vocals, the file is a whole ecosystem of sound — and elation. As Cave says in a launch, “There may be by no means a grasp plan after we make a file. The data slightly replicate again the emotional state of the writers and musicians who performed them. Listening to this, I don’t know, it appears we’re completely happy.”

As such, there’s a sort of joyful madcap nature to those 10 tracks, careening from extra terrestrial visions of nature (the cinematic, hovering opener “Track of the Lake”) to the Mount Olympus-sized title monitor “Wild God,” a track that seems like one thing the titular deity would bellow someplace wild and peculiar just like the tectonic plates of Iceland. Studded among the many washes of choruses and strings and keys, standouts like the only “Frogs” thrum with life as Cave entreats an amphibian to “hop inside my coat” “within the Sunday rain.” It’s a monitor that tugs at a form of candy nostalgia, like remembering the scent of summer time in winter. 

After which there are the extra private glimpses inside Cave’s cranium — like “Pleasure,” a melancholy but aching affair shot via with understated piano, area noise, and mild horns through which “a ghost with big sneakers” tells him: “We’ve all had an excessive amount of sorrow/now could be the time for pleasure.” The belief, in fact, is that the ghost is his son Arthur, who died in 2015 and seemingly impressed Cave’s bleak and wonderful 2016 album Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen. And for anybody who has misplaced somebody, it’s a reminder that our family members wouldn’t need us to get up each morning “with the blues throughout my head,” as Cave sings.

After all, not each second will be transcendent — in case you cringe on the phrase “panties” you in all probability gained’t take care of the love track “O Wow O Wow (How Great She Is)” — however there’s a way of abandon and play to Wild God that’s infectious. Produced by Cave and long-time collaborator Warren Ellis, the file continues their fixed dialog, confidently proclaiming that higher instances are forward.