With 2016’s Skeleton Tree and 2019’s Ghosteen, the late 2010s found Nick Cave mining art from unimaginable personal tragedy to great effect. On Wild God, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ first album of the 2020s, Cave continues to create moments of stunning beauty in the wake of recent devastating misfortune. While not as consistent as its two superlative predecessors, Wild God does deliver more than a few standout moments that prove, yet again, that grief and its processing, while never intentionally sought, can reap poetry that is at once enchanting to the ear and cathartic for the soul.
“On the shore of the lake, the old man sat and watched a woman bathing, with its golden touch, the light was such, that the moment was worth saving.” These are the first lyrics of “Song of the Lake”, Wild God’s first and best song. Over rousingly emotive strings and a gorgeous choral arrangement, Cave pours himself into the moment. During “Song of the Lake’s” final minute, the sexagenarian sounds emotionally spent as he repeats, “oh, never mind, never mind.” Had the track appeared at the opposite end of this collection, it would work equally as well. Because it’s the album’s opener, it sets the bar high for everything that follows.
The album’s title track finds Cave telling a story that references Jubilee Street, the imagined place best remembered from the song of the same name. Just before Wild God’s halfway point, the moving ballad, ironically titled “Joy”, has Cave recounting waking up that morning and feeling like someone in his family has died. Moments later, the ghost of a boy visits the narrator’s bedroom. “Have mercy on me please!” the singer cries just before he repeats the song’s title as the song fades out.
Wild God’s last four songs push the tone of the album in a more emotionally optimistic direction. In addition to the cinnamon horses of the track’s namesake, Cave uses other colorful imagery that includes white vampires and a strawberry moon. “I told my friends that life was good, that love would endure if it could,” Cave sings over tense, sustained strings. A gentle piano and acoustic guitar feature prominently on the excellent, folky “Long Dark Night”. The comparatively upbeat instrumentation helps to temper the song’s theme of a soul in crisis. “O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)” is completely different than anything that’s preceded it. Utilizing synths and a vocoder, as well as the sampled voice of a woman remembering tender moments between herself and a lover, “O Wow O Wow” distinguishes itself as a pleasantly rare expression of sensuality and desire amidst the sorrow.
The two minute “As the Waters Cover the Sea” pulls Wild God into a glorious finale that has Cave and the record’s ever-present choral group finally joined in unison as they all sing, “Peace and good tidings He will bring, good tidings to all things.” Although there are a couple awkward moments on Wild God that jerk the listener out of the hypnotic reverie conjured by the Seeds’ charismatic frontman (“Frogs”, “Final Rescue Attempt”), the band’s eighteenth studio album is largely decent and delivers at least one or two new songs that will surely become fan favorites that will work their way into live sets and best of collections in the years to come.
Rating: 7.0/10
