Wild God

On Wild God, he’s open and honest and raw and impassioned and vital.

Wild God can feel fathomless, but it leaves you buoyant.

Packed with remarkable songs, its mood of what you might call radical optimism is potent and contagious. You leave it feeling better than you did previously: an improving experience, in the best sense of the phrase.

Wild God is a profound and provocative addition to the substantial Cave canon. It is an audacious, reaching record. It may just be the masterpiece of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ remarkable career.

Although there are outliers (particularly "Final Rescue Attempt" and "Conversion"), for the most part, the album revels in its own straightforwardness, and the band makes it sound effortless.

Wild God is a markedly widescreen offering: the album very literally features both bells and whistles. However, maximalist palette is applied with rare subtlety and appreciation for the alluring spaces between notes, and The Bad Seeds rhythm section (including the inimitable drumming of Thomas Wydler, back in the fold following health problems) infuse the proceedings with an earthy, robust pulse.

There’s a quiet, steady faith apparent in ‘Wild God’, a simple wonder that feels unique in modern songwriting, a beatific glow that lingers after the final lights have been switched off.

Wild God does what great art is supposed to do: it takes the artist's experiences, however dark, and makes them universal. [Sep 2024, p.70]

Reunited with his band, orchestrated and multiplied, Cave surfs a swelling tide of preposterous proportions. He is the wild god, a wearied charismatic presence, flitting between the songs. Nobody else sounds like this. [Oct 2024, p.26]

Wild God is exactly what you’d expect a Bad Seeds record made by church-going Nick Cave at the age of 66 to sound like – vocally, that wobble and rasp now is what you’re going to get from decades spent smoking snouts and everything else besides. Musically, it is a slow and elegantly-arranged record, which also seems fitting for where Cave is in life.

Their first since Ghosteen is rich in the singer’s blend of archness and romantic yearning, while his simpatico cohorts’ dynamics throb and tingle. [Oct 2024, p.100]

Joy isn’t merely happiness felt, it’s happiness earned, and Wild God is a remarkable portrait of a man putting in the work required to cross the threshold.

It's a potent celebration of life amidst chaos and cruel fate, and while it still doesn't sound exactly happy, in its way it is the most optimistic LP Cave has ever made.

With a lust for life, the once-dark prince is letting the light in.

If much of Wild God is tremendous, mobilising bodies of water, religious figures, animals and allegorical storytelling in the service of unanchored feeling, the Bad Seeds do remain a tad muted in the mix. Nonetheless: Cave muttering “never mind, never mind” on Song of the Lake is an act of consolation you can believe in.

It reminds me how much I miss the devilish Old Nick, but it’s a privilege to bear witness to such a beautifully realised artistic, emotional and philosophical journey by one of the greatest singer-songwriters of our time.

Forty years in and Nick Cave isn't showing any signs of slowing down, if any he's got too much creativity to try and contain within this album's ten songs.

A deeply human record, the shepherd stepping away from his sermons to look for wonder and rapture. [Oct 2024, p.86]

Wild God explores the depths of human emotions through music and lyrics, with each track expressively and articulately sung by Cave. And while it’s nice to see the band poking their heads up and producing intelligent and effusive music, let’s pump the brakes a bit on the exuberance factor as the established expectations aren’t met all the way through.