Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Wild God – Album Review
by Killian Laher

Nick Cave returns, this time with the Bad Seeds, for a first album of new material in a couple of years.  It was clear that they had reached an endpoint in their path, which culminated in 2019’s Ghosteen, and it was time for a change.  So is the new album back to the fire and brimstone of old?  Well, no.  There is nothing much on this album that would jar with the uninitiated.

It opens with the half-spoken Song of the Lake, an uplifting tune where Cave sings “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put us back together again”, a line that lots could be read into.  The title track is the fullest sounding track here, Cave possibly drawing a line under the last ten years, singing “he went searching for the girl down on Jubilee Street”, building slowly to a chorus of multiple choirs.  Frogs is similar, Cave singing at the top of his register over soaring, almost celestial keyboards.  All a bit over the top!  At this point, you begin to think a whole album of this would be a bit much to process.  Next up is Joy, a slow effective rumble over muted backing, not spoiled by choirs of angels intoning wordlessly here and there.

The wracked-with-sorrow strings and piano ballads Final Rescue Attempt and Conversion have kitchen basin rather than kitchen sink production and are all the better for it, building from floundering despair to something approaching hope as the inevitable choirs join the fray.  The dramatic Cinnamon Horses builds to some almost cinematic flourishes which work very well.  The relatively conventional Long Dark Night is a classic Nick Cave, tender piano ballad while O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is) is a straight tribute to ex-Birthday Party/Bad Seed, the late Anita Lane, featuring a recording of her speaking.  The album finishes with the brief ballad As The Waters Cover the Sea, again joined by the choirs.

For an album billed as something of a creative rebirth, it feels like it falls short.  Nick Cave and co have made great use of a multi-person choir, which is difficult to get past, and ultimately makes for an album that is a challenge to get into.

Wild God