“I don’t know in regards to the music, however lately I really feel a extra pressing want to attach with individuals,” Nick Cave informed NME after we had an viewers with him final 12 months. “There’s a sort of responsibility in that, that possibly I didn’t really feel earlier than.”
That “responsibility” was laborious gained. In the course of the classes for the Dangerous Seeds’ 2016 album ‘Skeleton Tree’, Cave’s life was side-swept by the tragic loss of life of his teenage son, Arthur, casting a shadow over the file and giving it a way more devastating weight. The dreamlike follow-up ‘Ghosteen’ noticed Cave searching for a method out of the fog of his loss, earlier than he and bandmate, greatest pal and collaborator Warren Ellis took inventory of the “disaster” of the COVID period’s darkish night time of the soul on the aptly-named lockdown album ‘Carnage’ in 2021. The next 12 months, the black cloud of loss returned with the loss of life of one other son when 30-year-old Jethroe Lazenby died.
Grief hits in numerous methods. In Cave’s ebook of intimate conversations with the journalist Seán O’Hagan (Religion, Hope And Carnage), he warned of the act of “calcifying across the absence of the person who you’re keen on”. Relatively than be bitter and frozen, Cave admits that he’s discovered a path to be extra open to others within the exterior world than ever earlier than.
“I informed my associates that life was very candy,” he affords on the sweeping cinematic prayer of ‘Cinnamon Horses’, the centre-piece of the 18th Dangerous Seeds album ‘Wild God’. It sees Cave promise “that love would endure if it may” with a peace in his voice and the bliss-kissed melodies that elevate the album ever heavenward. These aren’t the songs of a vampire.
Opener ‘Music For The Lake’ carries the lucid dream method of ‘Ghosteen’ however with the rock core of the Dangerous Seeds – significantly Jim Sclavunos’ soulful drums – driving it with a really earthly delight. The title observe is a joyous waltz cathartically culminating in Cave because the preacher man calling on you “if you’re feeling lonely and in case you’re feeling blue, and also you simply don’t know what to do,” then to hitch him on this journey of pleasure and escape.
Highlights include the candlelit encore-starter of ‘Lengthy Darkish Evening’ and the totally attractive euphoric trip-hop of ‘O Wow O Wow (How Great She Is)’. The latter is to be filed alongside ‘Into My Arms’, ‘The Ship Music’ and ‘Babe You Flip Me On’ alongside Cave’s most masterful love songs, however this time in tribute to his late pal, former companion and bandmate Anita Lane, drawing out her impish methods and ending with a loving voicemail from the singer and muse.
The file practically took its title from album tracks ‘Pleasure’ (an intimate piano and soundscape track owed to “vivid, triumphant metaphors of affection”) and ‘Conversion’ (a fiery testomony to life on the opposite aspect of being “touched by the spirit and touched by the flame”), however ‘Wild God’ simply captures these highly effective mysteries that appear to fall from the sky – in all their sizes and styles.
Dangerous Seeds information are infamously loaded with gothic doom and gloom. In fact, this ain’t a poptastic LOLfest, and nonetheless colored with the numerous shades of a life so difficult and weathered. However by no means has Cave been so freewheelin’ than on the giddy ‘Frogs’, “Leaping for love and the opening sky above” as “Kris Kristofferson walks by kicking a can in a shirt he hasn’t washed for years“. With a lust for all times, the once-dark prince is letting the sunshine in.
Particulars
- File label: PIAS
- Launch date: August 30, 2024
