Album Review: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Wild God

Reviewing Nick Cave is akin to reviewing Leviticus – he’s too damn labyrinthine, too damn perspicacious, too damn brilliant. Wild God is the Bad Seeds’ 18th studio album, 30 years on from their debut From Her To Eternity, a magnificent blend of experimental post-punk bleached in the Delta Blues.

Its title track was co-written with Cave’s former girlfriend and collaborator Anita Lane, who died in 2021, and who wonderfully appears here on ‘O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)’, via a phone recording reminiscing on the pair’s younger selves. 2019’s masterful Ghosteen was the final part and indeed pinnacle of a trilogy of Bad Seed albums exploring themes of loss, optimism, death and faith.

Through unimaginable personal loss, Cave forged music that doubled as a metaphysical scapular, illuminating a hopeful path through grief. They are fragile, vulnerable, transcendental records. Wild God, on the other hand, is earthbound, on the loose and full of beans.

The repeated refrain of “never mind, never mind” on opening track ‘Song Of The Lake’ is a perpetual prayer, which perhaps is recited by the eponymous hero of the title track, as he walks the earth, searching for “a faraway girl who was basically a mirage which nevertheless loomed large”. Oh man, it makes you grin.

Second single ‘Frogs’ is just mighty, a song with which to breathe again, its blasting Kris Kristofferson reference making you laugh out loud. The epic ‘Joy’ is Bad Seeds 3.0 – empyrean rock and roll, with a celestial choir magnifying preacher man Cave’s bellowing gospel of surrender.

Elsewhere, the piano ballads ‘Cinnamon Horses’ and ‘Long Dark Night’ prove further highlights. Brilliant stuff.

9/10

Out August 30