Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Wild God Review

Whilst it hasn’t always been my way or the highway from Nick Cave’s perspective, there’s always at least been a sense that when it comes to The Bad Seeds, he sees things and the way they can be done in a very specific light. Like many other bands – if that’s strictly what they can be called – there was a lengthy stall on playing together due to the pandemic, but the singer has preferred to work in collaboration with Warren Ellis in recent years, until he decided that their eighteenth album should be a “band forward” one.

Few people in the semi-public eye can point to more understandable mitigation than Cave, a life where on the one hand he has an almost unique open dialogue with the world via the Red Hand Files but equally has been touched by an immense amount of personal suffering. Littered with allegory and biblical references, Wild God it would appear is a brick in a larger, less visible wall.

True to history, it’s creation was still a little haphazard – Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood was subbed in on bass because he was just up the road – but in form there’s an uplifting energy at work, a soulfulness that contrasts with the predictably dark subject matter. At it’s best on the Johnny Cash mirroring Long Dark Night, opener Song of The Lake and the tender sounding Joy, Wild God is still cooked up to a recipe of Nick Cave’s choosing, but it’s the ingredients that make a touching whole.

You can read a full review here.