Wild God - Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds: Review
Review by Lav:
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds is a legendary music outfit by almost any standard. Nick has been hard at work for over 4 decades now and as he's continued to evolve and wander through landscapes of new sounds he's continued to be a fascinating artist. Even decades into his career his sound has continued to evolve, channeling tragedy into chilling expanse on albums like Skeleton Tree and weaving playful evocative poetry on 2021's Carnage, his previous record before Wild God. Despite the length of his career thus far, he continues to serve up records whose sonic and narrative progressions are fascinating to unwind.
The era of this new album got off to a really strong start with a pair of singles I liked quite a bit. Wild God came first and delivered a vibrant series of descriptors telling the story of the titular "wild god." In my favorite point on the song it assesses the kinds of expectations that people have for a god merely because it's a god. Everything comes together in this fascinating rush of energy and intensity in the second wave with tense synth loops and Nick wailing away in the background. Frogs is another single I liked quite a bit. While it isn't one of the most thematically interesting points on the record the way the instrumental manages to swell higher and higher each time the song needs a crescendo is a great touch that elevates the dramatic performance.
Those two singles work to start the record off with a really strong sequence following opener Song Of The Lake. The track is about a man debating whether to follow a woman into a lake and dissolve there or stay behind and simply evaporate over time. It has a surprisingly funny moment on the chorus where Nick cuts himself off with a series of "never minds." When the song soars behind this backing chorus and increasingly shimmering baroque instrumentation it makes for a memorable moment.
The first half of the record concludes with another strong sequence. Final Rescue Attempt stands out right away with a quiet but notable little synth loop that feels dark and weirdly contemporary compared to the instrumentation surrounding it. The song seems to be a bit of an existential crisis about worshipping "gods" in the first place. The song ends with a moment of quite beautiful clarity that the instrumental matches well. That leads into my favorite deep cut Conversion, which lives up to its evocative title. It gets most of the narrative work done in the first half concluding with a girl being touched by the flame of a spirit and while she looks beautiful in the moment, the resulting voices haunt Nick for the rest of the song. In turn with that narrative shift the song absolutely erupts into one of the loudest moments on the album with an intense vocal choir layered over Nick's anguished shouting and repetition folded into the background making for a stellar finale.
Finally, I've changed my tone on Long Dark Night since it first came out. It's still probably my least favorite single but it's the song on the record that most resembles an album like Skeleton Tree. It has a somber demeanor and slowly unfolding poetry that seems to stretch over every single syllable. The combination of stark verses occasionally so stark that Nick is backed by nothing other than a piano with the more dramatic sauntering chorus is a nice touch.
Wild God isn't exactly a perfect album though. Like many Nick Cave albums it feels longer than it needs to be. The two worst offenders are Joy and Cinnamon Horses. The former cuts off the momentum on the first half of the record by playing out its rather flat "jumping for joy" refrains for several full minutes in its second half while the latter similarly gets too caught up in repetition while what Nick actually has to say doesn't really interest me that much. There's also O Wow O Wow which oscillates between admiration for a loved one and some incredibly strange farm animal imagery that is unintentionally kind of funny. It's certainly one of the strangest moments on the album and I'm not sure the sonically minimal style it deploys on the verses are right for Nick's bizarre lyrics.
Despite its slip-ups, Wild God is a compelling record both in and out of context. Within the greater discography of Nick Cave it represents an impressive level of intrigue and continuing evolution of sound for someone who has been so visible in music for so long. But even without that context, it's a compelling album whose lyricism is consistently interesting and engaging. It's interpolation of baroque instrumentation and dynamic layering of vocals makes for an incredibly compelling sonic palette that delivers one dramatic moment after another. What results is a strong album that's slightly too bulky but has enough highlights to see it through. 7.5/10
For more indie check out my review of FontainesDC's Romance
