It can not be said that Nick Cave’s career has not aged gracefully. Sure, The Birthday Party feels like another life, but with each album released in the past two decades, Cave has successfully moved towards filling the gap Leonard Cohen’s death would leave. Wild God (Play it Again Sam) continues to uphold his legacy while carrying the hopeful shimmer of a life not met with the kind of tragedy Cave has known. After the death of his son, he is moving past the kind of grief that haunted some of his more recent work. Even at 66 years old, Nick’s vocals have held up, even if the title track is more spoken than sung.
The Bad Seeds keep him anchored from trolling off into poetry. The phrasing of the songs falls somewhere between Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond. The biggest change is the weird manner in which his Punk past collides with the hippy Pop sounds of the sixties. He remains a storyteller, though at times it feels like these are coming from behind a pulpit given the almost gospel hints of the choir backing his voice. Even with his lighter subject matter .”Joy” feels like it picks up where he left off on “Push the Sky Away.” Cave has gone on the records as saying the central theme of this album is joy. He has been moving away from the murder ballads he is famous for. Age makes him more introspective and vulnerable. Don’t mistake this introspection as a weakness, as it is what makes a song like “Final Rescue Attempt’ shine, as it is one of the album’s best songs.
The minimalist arrangement of “Conversion” allows it to be bathed in ambiance, so Cave might plead his poetry over it. The drums provide the needed dynamic shift. Despite Cave’s claims this album is about joy, it carries a great deal of religious and spiritual musings. “Cinnamon Horses” is a well-produced ballad, that floats on an emotive cloud. If Neil Diamond wrote a song for an A-24 horror movie, the results would not be unlike “Long Dark Night.” It is not evident that Colin Greenwood of Radiohead has a hand in this album until “O Wow O Wow.” This should have been the lead single from this album, as it bridges things into a more modern-day feel. It’s hard to imagine a “happy” Nick Cave song, but this one works.
Cave ends the album with a sparse folk ballad, that swells into a choir joining him. This is a very nuanced album that requires several spins to fully digest. Cave’s less depressed fans might have an easier time clicking with this one, while the bulk of his audience might find the drastic shift in mood, as something that will have to grow on them. Regardless there is no denying the quality of songwriting, and artistic choices made it is going to need time to grow on me, not one for optimism in music, but that is a personal choice. If you are one of Cave’s less depressed fans then you might dig this one, everyone else is going to need to get used to it.
Buy the album here:
https://nickcave-badseeds.ffm.to/wild-god
9 / 10
WIL CIFER
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