Australia - 2024
Singer-Songwriter, Art Rock, Gospel, Baroque Pop
In the long queue in front of the arena where I was waiting for the Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ concert, there were people from all around : Netherlands, United Kingdom, Denmark, Brazil, France. And despite our many origins and ages, we almost all agreed on something : the first time we listened to Wild God, none of us knew what to think. And I believe this peculiar skepticism rose because we witnessed something in this album we were not expecting. For the first time, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds were going back to sounds we already knew, they were looking back.
If Nick Cave keeps his spoken-word-storyteller attitude he developed throughout his entire career, the album’s sounds bring us back to the more straightforward rock records such as Abattoir Blues or Nocturama. Thanks to Warren Ellis, Wild God also keeps his electronic experiments from Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen (especially on tracks such as Final Rescue Attempt and O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)). Lyrically, we can hear throwbacks to Push the Sky Away on Wild God that refers to Jubilee Street, while Frogs references Kris Kristofferson “in a shirt he hasn’t washed for years” as if he escaped the other cultural references from Higgs Boson Blues. And with the revisitation of the intricate relationship between heavenly faith and earthly love, it’s like moving back to The Boatman’s Call and The Good Son. But even though the band decided to revisit their roots, they still move forward. When Cave and Ellis released CARNAGE in 2021, they used a gospel choir on White Elephant, and Wild God probably is Nick Cave most straightforward gospel record.
If Nick Cave can sometimes act like a guru, telling bleak stories, leading crowds and singing about his most intimate struggles, Wild God is a massive movement outward. Seeing this album played live made me realized how much it was meant to be heard in epic proportions. This is why most of the album’s chorus are so simple, because they are meant to be easily sung by a choir or a crowd. These chorus become mantras. It’s “Bring your spirit down !” on Wild God, “And I will always love you” on Final Rescue Attempt, “You’re beautiful” on Conversion or “O wow O wow how wonderful she is” on the song with the same title.
Simple words carrying a tremendous sense of love. And this time Nick Cave isn’t the lone guru anymore, he’s the catalyst. There’s a wonderful exchange of questions and answers between Cave, the musicians and the choir on all songs, his voice sometimes mixed at the same height as everything else. Wild God becomes this splendid love letter to humanity as a whole. He turns all of us into frogs when he sings “the frogs are jumping in the gutters / Leaping to God, amazed of love / And amazed of pain / Amazed to be back in the water again”. But each time, all these frogs and wanderers are drenched in a divine light. But it doesn’t only come from above. Because in Nick Cave’s world, God and what he represents left Heaven. So where is He now ?
On the title track, Nick Cave sings about this “wild god searching for what all wild gods are searching for / And he flew through the dying city like a prehistoric bird / He went searching for the girl down on Jubilee Street / But she died in a bedsit in 1993 / So he flew to the top of the world and looked around / And said, “where are my people? Where are my people to bring your spirit down?” The fact that God left Heaven and became wild is an act of liberation. The receiver of Cave’s faith isn’t in one place anymore, but in several places, which means that both faith and love can be directed everywhere, and that’s what makes this album feels so high-powered.
On Final Rescue Attempt, Cave questions “who are these gods that you now defend? And what purpose do they serve now at the end of time?” Wild gods, just like frogs, are in everyone. In Conversion, there’s an “old god” “in a field of trees were stones stacked on stones for ten centuries”. But God also is a woman in the name of Anita Lane :”She rises in advance of her panties / I can confirm that God actually exists / She turns and smiles but never ever scantily”. O Wow O Wow is a song dedicated to one of the original Bad Seeds, Anita Lane, a fantastic singer-songwriter who wrote numerous lyrics, among which From Her to Eternity. And O Wow ends with the recording of a phone call between Cave and Lane. She was one of his wild gods. Because ultimately, by decentralizing God’s power, Cave makes it reachable, for anyone, even those, like me, who don’t believe.
In his newsletter the Red Hand Files, Nick Cave said that “Whether a wild god, the son of God or a mere mortal – we are all locked in a mutual dependency, supporting and lifting and seeing and believing in one another.” This has always been one of the trickiest thing to understand about Nick Cave, his religious faith. Since he started making music, we’ve seen him praising God, spitting on Him, killing Him, worshipping Him. But now it looks like Cave went back to that same relationship he had with God in the perfect ballad Into My Arms back in 1997 : “I don't believe in an interventionist God / But I know, darling, that you do / But if I did, I would kneel down and ask him / Not to intervene when it came to you / Will not to touch a hair on your head / Leave you as you are / If he felt he had to direct you / Then direct you into my arms”. In this love song, Cave’s behavior towards God is paradoxical. He doesn’t want his lover to be changed, but at the same time he asks God to gently intervene in his favour if He had to.
And so, his faith is deeply connected with his love. Wild God now becomes an album praising the faith we have in each others, no matter how irrational it can be. On Song of the Lake, such a moment is framed by an old man who sat and “watched a woman bathing / With its golden touch, the light was such / That the moment was worth saving”. On Conversion, a girl with long dark hair is drawn to God “like flame” and Cave states : “I’ve never seen you as beautiful”. Every song contains a consequent amount of love and beauty where humans are confronted to unexplainable forces that fill them with joy.
And this tremendous joy, Nick Cave says it’s time to feel, gives its name to the song Joy. But surprisingly, this might the saddest piece here. “I woke up this morning with the blues all around my head / I felt like someone in my family was dead”. Nick Cave has travelled through so many dark days to finally be able to record an album like Wild God, and this song is the acknowledgement of that journey. Because if “maybe a long dark night is coming down”, we still need to cling to our faith in a brighter future. “All across the world, they shout their angry words / About the end of love, yet the stars stand above the earth”. This reasoning works the same in Cinnamon Horses where Cave says “I told my friends some things were good / That love would endure if it could / And the cinnamon horses / Stroll through the castle ruins”. There might be a world crumbling, but faith will always be the last remaining fortification.
And this tremendous joy, Nick Cave says it’s time to feel, gives its name to the song Joy. But surprisingly, this might the saddest piece here. “I woke up this morning with the blues all around my head / I felt like someone in my family was dead”. Nick Cave has travelled through so many dark days to finally be able to record an album like Wild God, and this song is the acknowledgement of that journey. Because if “maybe a long dark night is coming down”, we still need to cling to our faith in a brighter future. “All across the world, they shout their angry words / About the end of love, yet the stars stand above the earth”. This reasoning works the same in Cinnamon Horses where Cave says “I told my friends some things were good / That love would endure if it could / And the cinnamon horses / Stroll through the castle ruins”. There might be a world crumbling, but faith will always be the last remaining fortification.
“And he knew that he would dissolve / If he followed her into the lake / But he also knew that if he remained upon the shore / He would, in time, evaporate” The first song was about our inevitable death, while the last song is about rebirth. And as the epic instrumentation fades away, we all feel this genuine force beaming inside us. With his irresistibly grand gesture, Nick Cave just woke up the wild gods inside us. And if They ever ache to be worshipped by someone, then we shall remember that Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ album is here to surround us with a loving faith as pure as frogs simply jumping from joy.
If Nick Cave keeps his spoken-word-storyteller attitude he developed throughout his entire career, the album’s sounds bring us back to the more straightforward rock records such as Abattoir Blues or Nocturama. Thanks to Warren Ellis, Wild God also keeps his electronic experiments from Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen (especially on tracks such as Final Rescue Attempt and O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)). Lyrically, we can hear throwbacks to Push the Sky Away on Wild God that refers to Jubilee Street, while Frogs references Kris Kristofferson “in a shirt he hasn’t washed for years” as if he escaped the other cultural references from Higgs Boson Blues. And with the revisitation of the intricate relationship between heavenly faith and earthly love, it’s like moving back to The Boatman’s Call and The Good Son. But even though the band decided to revisit their roots, they still move forward. When Cave and Ellis released CARNAGE in 2021, they used a gospel choir on White Elephant, and Wild God probably is Nick Cave most straightforward gospel record.
If Nick Cave can sometimes act like a guru, telling bleak stories, leading crowds and singing about his most intimate struggles, Wild God is a massive movement outward. Seeing this album played live made me realized how much it was meant to be heard in epic proportions. This is why most of the album’s chorus are so simple, because they are meant to be easily sung by a choir or a crowd. These chorus become mantras. It’s “Bring your spirit down !” on Wild God, “And I will always love you” on Final Rescue Attempt, “You’re beautiful” on Conversion or “O wow O wow how wonderful she is” on the song with the same title.
Simple words carrying a tremendous sense of love. And this time Nick Cave isn’t the lone guru anymore, he’s the catalyst. There’s a wonderful exchange of questions and answers between Cave, the musicians and the choir on all songs, his voice sometimes mixed at the same height as everything else. Wild God becomes this splendid love letter to humanity as a whole. He turns all of us into frogs when he sings “the frogs are jumping in the gutters / Leaping to God, amazed of love / And amazed of pain / Amazed to be back in the water again”. But each time, all these frogs and wanderers are drenched in a divine light. But it doesn’t only come from above. Because in Nick Cave’s world, God and what he represents left Heaven. So where is He now ?
On the title track, Nick Cave sings about this “wild god searching for what all wild gods are searching for / And he flew through the dying city like a prehistoric bird / He went searching for the girl down on Jubilee Street / But she died in a bedsit in 1993 / So he flew to the top of the world and looked around / And said, “where are my people? Where are my people to bring your spirit down?” The fact that God left Heaven and became wild is an act of liberation. The receiver of Cave’s faith isn’t in one place anymore, but in several places, which means that both faith and love can be directed everywhere, and that’s what makes this album feels so high-powered.
On Final Rescue Attempt, Cave questions “who are these gods that you now defend? And what purpose do they serve now at the end of time?” Wild gods, just like frogs, are in everyone. In Conversion, there’s an “old god” “in a field of trees were stones stacked on stones for ten centuries”. But God also is a woman in the name of Anita Lane :”She rises in advance of her panties / I can confirm that God actually exists / She turns and smiles but never ever scantily”. O Wow O Wow is a song dedicated to one of the original Bad Seeds, Anita Lane, a fantastic singer-songwriter who wrote numerous lyrics, among which From Her to Eternity. And O Wow ends with the recording of a phone call between Cave and Lane. She was one of his wild gods. Because ultimately, by decentralizing God’s power, Cave makes it reachable, for anyone, even those, like me, who don’t believe.
In his newsletter the Red Hand Files, Nick Cave said that “Whether a wild god, the son of God or a mere mortal – we are all locked in a mutual dependency, supporting and lifting and seeing and believing in one another.” This has always been one of the trickiest thing to understand about Nick Cave, his religious faith. Since he started making music, we’ve seen him praising God, spitting on Him, killing Him, worshipping Him. But now it looks like Cave went back to that same relationship he had with God in the perfect ballad Into My Arms back in 1997 : “I don't believe in an interventionist God / But I know, darling, that you do / But if I did, I would kneel down and ask him / Not to intervene when it came to you / Will not to touch a hair on your head / Leave you as you are / If he felt he had to direct you / Then direct you into my arms”. In this love song, Cave’s behavior towards God is paradoxical. He doesn’t want his lover to be changed, but at the same time he asks God to gently intervene in his favour if He had to.
And so, his faith is deeply connected with his love. Wild God now becomes an album praising the faith we have in each others, no matter how irrational it can be. On Song of the Lake, such a moment is framed by an old man who sat and “watched a woman bathing / With its golden touch, the light was such / That the moment was worth saving”. On Conversion, a girl with long dark hair is drawn to God “like flame” and Cave states : “I’ve never seen you as beautiful”. Every song contains a consequent amount of love and beauty where humans are confronted to unexplainable forces that fill them with joy.
And this tremendous joy, Nick Cave says it’s time to feel, gives its name to the song Joy. But surprisingly, this might the saddest piece here. “I woke up this morning with the blues all around my head / I felt like someone in my family was dead”. Nick Cave has travelled through so many dark days to finally be able to record an album like Wild God, and this song is the acknowledgement of that journey. Because if “maybe a long dark night is coming down”, we still need to cling to our faith in a brighter future. “All across the world, they shout their angry words / About the end of love, yet the stars stand above the earth”. This reasoning works the same in Cinnamon Horses where Cave says “I told my friends some things were good / That love would endure if it could / And the cinnamon horses / Stroll through the castle ruins”. There might be a world crumbling, but faith will always be the last remaining fortification.
And this tremendous joy, Nick Cave says it’s time to feel, gives its name to the song Joy. But surprisingly, this might the saddest piece here. “I woke up this morning with the blues all around my head / I felt like someone in my family was dead”. Nick Cave has travelled through so many dark days to finally be able to record an album like Wild God, and this song is the acknowledgement of that journey. Because if “maybe a long dark night is coming down”, we still need to cling to our faith in a brighter future. “All across the world, they shout their angry words / About the end of love, yet the stars stand above the earth”. This reasoning works the same in Cinnamon Horses where Cave says “I told my friends some things were good / That love would endure if it could / And the cinnamon horses / Stroll through the castle ruins”. There might be a world crumbling, but faith will always be the last remaining fortification.
“And he knew that he would dissolve / If he followed her into the lake / But he also knew that if he remained upon the shore / He would, in time, evaporate” The first song was about our inevitable death, while the last song is about rebirth. And as the epic instrumentation fades away, we all feel this genuine force beaming inside us. With his irresistibly grand gesture, Nick Cave just woke up the wild gods inside us. And if They ever ache to be worshipped by someone, then we shall remember that Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ album is here to surround us with a loving faith as pure as frogs simply jumping from joy.