Here it is again: Nick Cave returns triumphantly from hell

The album opens with Song Of The Lake, a song that will trace the path that Nick Cave wants to take the listener, which is actually the path he is walking on at this moment: there is no relief for the evil that has struck him, only living with it and even getting along reasonably well. The pain does not disappear, but the anguish does. “Because either there is a remedy or there is not. / And if there is none, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. / It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. / Oh, it doesn’t matter. / It doesn’t matter…”. The Australian implores “never mind” up to 20 times in the song that begins the path of the proud. Wild God, because only by taking a position like this is it possible to get up and move forward after the shocks that life has given him: the death of two of his children (aged 15 and 30) in seven years, from 2015 to 2022.

No, it’s not a happy album Wild God, who signs as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (released last Friday); it is an optimistic, vitalist album, the return to life of a man who has wandered in darkness in recent times with a tremendously painful inner struggle. With all due respect and without wanting to compare situations, this album brings to mind that great video which took place when Atlético de Madrid was promoted from the Second Division to the First Division, with Mono Burgos sticking his head out of a sewer on Madrid’s Gran Via. “We’re here,” read a sign. Nick Cave has returned from hell, and he has done so in triumph.

The Bad Seeds signed on the previous album, Ghosteen, but they were hardly felt since Cave and his inseparable sidekick in recent years, Warren Ellis, monopolized almost everything. Wild God, and despite the anecdotal presence of the king instrument of rock, the guitar, the presence of the Malas Semillas is noted in the tension with which they sustain the songs, in that being behind the leader in case he relapses and faints while trying to get out of the affliction. Also very important are the choirs, with abundant voices, always enhancing the songs, some for the ghostly (Frogs) and others spiritually (Songs of The Lake either Wild God). A chorus that is often purifying, like a church, because there is a gospel atmosphere that filters through much of the album. Sometimes it even reminds one of those torrential songs by Van Morrison where the Irishman begs for mercy beneath dense instrumentation or emphatic choruses.

What Cave does on most of the album is talk to this mystical figure to whom he has given himself over to relieve the torment and in this sense he surpasses himself in his narrative capacity, which is already saying a lot considering his discography.. Joy, the longest song (6.13) From an album with the same length as before (44 minutes), it begins as one imagines the Australian singer wakes up many days: “I woke up this morning with sadness hovering over my head. / I felt like someone in my family was dead. / And I hopped like a rabbit and fell to my knees. / I called out to everyone and said, ‘Have mercy on me, please, have mercy on me.’” This song is the perfect example of the album’s style: a prayer sung like a conversation that, when the listener is already caught up, a chorus emerges that projects the composition into a different dimension: like a song within a song.

There is no topic that lowers the great general level. There it is. O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is), another optimistic ballad about death dedicated to Anita Lane (one of the first Bad Seeds and Cave’s ex-partner, who died in 2021 at the age of 61) and in which it fits perfectly with a autotune (or is it a vocoder?). Cave knows how to handle even these things. In some phases of the album he introduces biblical passages, as in Frogs, with a reference to Cain and Abel and where that specialist of evocative sound atmospheres that is Warren Ellis stands out. Perhaps in the way of singing in Frogs, Cave was inspired by late Bowie. Maybe…

The sensational thing about Wild God is that the overcoming of pain is developed with accessible and beautiful melodies, some of which can be considered among the most commercial (if this term fits Cave) of his career. The final part of the creepy Coversion, For example, it can be sung at the top of its lungs in the pavilions that will host his new tour.

And as a culmination of this wonderful album of exaltation and resistance, Wild God closes with As the Water Covers the Seaa beautiful two-minute gospel song that only needs to end with an Amen.