Disc review | Strange things happen to Nick Cave’s dramatic voice on the new album

Rock/Album

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Wild God. Soon.

★★★

Wild God – in the lyrics of his album Nick Cave calls the record joyful and estimates that the joy of the players can be heard from it. It sounds different than anything done with the Bad Seeds band before.

With Ghosteen (2019) the band had very little to do, and its reduction would seem to remain an interim work. But maybe before that Skeleton Tree (2016) will be the last in terms of its style, approximately as we have come to expect from the Bad Seeds.

Caven actions have inevitably been viewed against his family tragedies for a long time. Being a world-famous star, Cave hasn’t been able to stay completely silent about what most people can’t talk about.

The echoes of the death of two boys have been heard especially in music – for good reason. After all, they belonged there.

Cave has dealt with the matter in public wisely, no more than has been necessary, and even that restrainedly but openly. In his solo concerts and on his Red Hand Files website, Cave has discussed everything with his listeners and almost taken responsibility for them.

All of that has made Cave close to his audience. He has become a kind of soul shepherd or psychiatrist, like a calm version of the frenzied preacher of the Bad Seeds concerts.

So it’s very easy to be happy if the grieving work is even mostly done and Cave has reached some kind of peace.

On a tiger however, is still on track and Wild God joy is dark.

The biblicalness of Cave’s texts has always been more about the Old than the New Testament, and even now the memory of the wild god of the title track is full of rape and military plunder. That god is flailing to fly into the world, which is in his breath.

At the end of the song, Cave seems to imply that he and all of us are the wild gods of our own lives. Could Nick Cave’s own new tes
tament, a showdown with religiosity, be hidden in it?

Calling pleasure From Wild God yes it is, but it has always been part of the Bad Seeds’ skillful playing. What’s new is a kind of serenity in the music. When the edges have been polished, the great pathos emerges even more prominently.

Cave’s dramatic and jagged voice is the same as before, but a little strange happens to it in the midst of more sensitive music. The sound sounds almost suffocating in places, although at best you can get close to the old power. The drama threatens to turn into melodrama.

Live, Cave and Bad Seeds have maintained their wild downloads until recently, but the best records came out at least 20 years ago. The band has existed in varying lineups for 40 years and no one needs or even should repeat themselves for that long.

Wild God the new festive pathos is great, but maybe once you get used to it, it’s not unreasonable to miss the old masterpieces for a little while longer.