Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Wild God

Released: 30/08/24

It's nothing new to say that Nick Cave is a man with one eye on The Almighty “ and his work with the Bad Seeds (essentially, these days, meaning his longtime friend and collaborator Warren Ellis ofDirty Three, with whom Cave co-writes many of the tracks) is strewn with references to the (Judeo-Christian) creator. Take The Brompton Oratory', from 1997'sThe Boatman's Call: The blood imparted in little sips / The smell of you still on my hands / As I bring the cup up to my lips. Perhaps the apotheosis of Cave's skilful mixing of the sacred with the profane (only the 14th-century English poet John Donne has the edge on the Australian in this regard), the narrator might be undermining the act of taking Communion, but he's still taking it nonetheless. And from the same LP, see the profoundly beautiful Into Your Arms', which tellingly, while containing the line I don't believe in an interventionist God, doesn't rule out the idea of God as such. 

Cave, on hisThe Red Hand Filesblog, has written: I've been circling around the idea of God for decades. It's been a slow creep around the periphery of His Majesty, pen in hand, trying to write God alive [¦]. Does God exist? I don't have any evidence either way, but I am not sure that is the right question. For me, the question is what it means to believe. It is the power of faith, then, that Cave is concerned with, and on the phenomenal, much-anticipated new record,Wild God, Cave has never sounded so energised by the idea, reflected in the sheer joyful optimism and ecstasy of the music. On this LP in particular, Cave's voice recalls another favourite, Scott Walker “ at turns lugubrious and viscerally alive “ and the tracks, too, recall the great man's oeuvre: strings (and choirs) soar, chords swirl, the piano glisters, hallelujahs', if not declaimed, are fervently implied “ the Australian bard inhabiting the centre of the sphere, a heretic poet attempting once again to describe the ineffable, to 'write God alive'.