Nick Cave & The Unhealthy Seeds ‘Wild God’ assessment: letting the sunshine in

“I don’t know concerning the music, however nowadays I really feel a extra pressing want to attach with folks,” Nick Cave informed NME after we had an viewers with him final 12 months. “There’s a type of responsibility in that, that perhaps I didn’t really feel earlier than.”

That “responsibility” was laborious gained. Through the classes for the Unhealthy Seeds’ 2016 album ‘Skeleton Tree’, Cave’s life was side-swept by the tragic demise of his teenage son, Arthur, casting a shadow over the report and giving it a way more devastating weight. The dreamlike follow-up ‘Ghosteen’ noticed Cave searching for a method out of the fog of his loss, earlier than he and bandmate, finest good friend and collaborator Warren Ellis took inventory of the “disaster” of the COVID period’s darkish evening of the soul on the aptly-named lockdown album ‘Carnage’ in 2021. The next 12 months, the black cloud of loss returned with the demise of one other son when 30-year-old Jethroe Lazenby died.

Grief hits in numerous methods. In Cave’s ebook of intimate conversations with the journalist Seán O’Hagan (Religion, Hope And Carnage), he warned of the act of “calcifying across the absence of the person who you’re keen on”. Somewhat than be bitter and frozen, Cave admits that he’s discovered a path to be extra open to others within the exterior world than ever earlier than.

“I informed my mates that life was very candy,” he affords on the sweeping cinematic prayer of ‘Cinnamon Horses’, the centre-piece of the 18th Unhealthy Seeds album ‘Wild God’. It sees Cave promise “that love would endure if it may” with a peace in his voice and the bliss-kissed melodies that raise the album ever heavenward. These aren’t the songs of a vampire.

Opener ‘Music For The Lake’ carries the lucid dream strategy of ‘Ghosteen’ however with the rock core of the Unhealthy Seeds – notably Jim Sclavunos’ soulful drums – driving it with a really earthly delight. The title monitor is a joyous waltz cathartically culminating in Cave because the preacher man calling on you “if you’re feeling lonely and when you’re feeling blue, and also you simply don’t know what to do,” then to affix him on this journey of pleasure and escape.

Highlights include the candlelit encore-starter of ‘Lengthy Darkish Evening’ and the totally beautiful euphoric trip-hop of ‘O Wow O Wow (How Great She Is)’. The latter is to be filed alongside ‘Into My Arms’, ‘The Ship Music’ and ‘Babe You Flip Me On’ alongside Cave’s most masterful love songs, however this time in tribute to his late good friend, former associate and bandmate Anita Lane, drawing out her impish methods and ending with a loving voicemail from the singer and muse.

The report practically took its identify from album tracks ‘Pleasure’ (an intimate piano and soundscape music owed to “brilliant, triumphant metaphors of affection”) and ‘Conversion’ (a fiery testomony to life on the opposite aspect of being “touched by the spirit and touched by the flame”), however ‘Wild God’ simply captures these highly effective mysteries that appear to fall from the sky – in all their styles and sizes.

Unhealthy Seeds data are infamously loaded with gothic doom and gloom. In fact, this ain’t a poptastic LOLfest, and nonetheless colored with the various shades of a life so difficult and weathered. However by no means has Cave been so freewheelin’ than on the giddy ‘Frogs’, “Leaping for love and the opening sky above” as “Kris Kristofferson walks by kicking a can in a shirt he hasn’t washed for years“. With a lust for all times, the once-dark prince is letting the sunshine in.

Particulars

• Document label: PIAS
• Launch date: August 30, 2024