“It does what great art is supposed to do, taking the artist’s experiences, however dark, and making them universal”: Nick Cave returns to the water on Wild God

The last couple of albums from Nick Cave were brilliant but harrowing. How could they not have been, given what Cave went through, losing two sons in the space of seven years. The 2021 Carnage collaboration with (red) righthand man Warren Ellis continued in a similar vein, although the shadow of the old, howling Cave floated through White Elephant. To say sunlight was peeping through is an exaggeration, but the curtains on his darkened room were at least starting to twitch. 

Words like ‘acceptance’ or ‘healing’ would be insulting, but Wild God can be heard as an artist living with what happened. Cave uses the words ‘joyous’, ‘happy’ and even ‘unchained’ to describe it, and, remarkably, you can hear where he’s coming from. 

Wild God and Frogs swing like nothing we’ve heard from him since 2008’s Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, especially the backing vocals and strings that burst from the former and the yearning in Cave’s voice in the latter, ‘amazed to be back in the water’. The lyrics of Frogs veer wondrously from an opening ‘Ushering in the week he knelt down, and crushed his brother’s head in with a bone’ to a closing cameo from Sunday Morning Coming Down Kris Kristofferson who wanders by, kicking a can. 

During a song that uses ‘Joy’ for its title, a ‘wild ghost’ moves around Cave’s bed, saying: ‘We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy’. Is this the same ghosteen who mounts the Final Rescue Attempt, who rode through the rain and ‘after that nothing ever really hurt again’? ‘And I will always love you,’ Cave croons to a presence there again in Conversion, touched by its flame to ‘never really ever hurt again’ as choir and drums lift the song heavenwards as an offering.

Cave emerges, however partially, from his Long Dark Night with the realisation ‘that love would endure if it could’ (Cinnamon Horses). O Wow O Wow celebrates rather than mourns ex-Bad Seed Anita Lane with a touching phone recording of her voice and a very un-Cavelike vocoder. As The Waters Cover The Sea sings of the peace that ‘he brings’, and an album this, for the most part, ‘joyous’ and ‘happy’ suggests that, against all odds, Cave has found some. 

Wild God does what great art is supposed to do: it takes the artist’s experiences, however dark, and makes them universal. There is simply no one else like him.

Pat Carty is a writer for Irish monthly music and politics magazine Hot Press. You’ll also find him at The Times, Irish Independent, Irish Times and Irish Examiner, and on radio wherever it’s broadcast.