Increasingly, Nick Cave albums, are not music you can just let drift around half listened to in the background. From Skeletal Tree onwards you've had to give them the whole of your attention, or you really would not grasp their quality or mood properly.
So it is with Wild God. On a half attentive run through of the songs they felt to be quite frail things, hung tentatively on a grumbled vocal line and choral verses. But then I thought on reflection, that Ghosteen was rarely about the well written song. The odd melodic line sprang out at you, lyrics caught you as they emotionally hit home. It was an album that had resonance. Similarly Wild God's melodic fragility can be deceptive, these are not insubstantial songs, far from it. There is gravitas, there is a spiritual purpose here.
The themes of grief and loss though no longer placed front and centre, linger in the back of the horizon in the odd lyric reference to a darling son. It's no longer just the deaths of his sons, but also of his friends and peers Shane McGowan and Anita Lane, that he's had to say goodbye to in recent years. Whilst Cave may have found a renewed enthusiasm for life, this has emerged phoenix like out of the embers of grief.
A number of songs begin with Cave intoning phrases expressively over meandering piano phrases that erupt into an uplifting lilting choral refrain over which he vocalises in impassioned and exalted style, reminiscent of evangelical pastors. There is an air of the charismatic preacher bequeathed to Cave, exuberantly uplifting his flock as the climax to a song is reached. Music's power to transcend boundaries clinches a new deal
On the track Conversion he bellows encouragingly over a cacophony of background vocals and rousing music - you're beautiful, you're beautiful, beautiful again stop, stop, stop, stop, your'e beautiful, you're beautiful, you're beautiful - I could imagine this track introducing a fever of healing into an audience. It could be a showstopper. Undoubtedly the finest track of many present here.
The album opens and closes with tracks that utilise watery imagery - Song of the Lake - As the Waters Cover the Sea. The latter finally letting rip with the full-blooded gospel choir of cliche. As if this album could not reach any higher without them. And The Bad Seeds? Well undoubtedly they contribute, but this appears to be becoming more muted with every successive album. Or was the name all along referring to the ones once inhabiting Cave's imagination.
Nick Cave has never been shy of religious forms, references and imagery. On Wild God it is at its most explicit and undisguised as being faith driven, rather than the fond stylistic affectation of yore. In the past he's been adept at flirting with Bible Belt intonations and expressions and making them serve the narrative he's telling or seeming to be expressions of his love for the divinity of a girlfriend. I think here we are getting closer to what he actually feels and genuinely believes, unfiltered through artifice.
The cloak of the arche storyteller dropped away quite a while ago, and here the practiced poet of darkened souls and murderous shadows, has seemingly, through loss and grief, actually found a kind of transcendent joy. When you look back to that feral singer that was Nick Cave in the drug induced extremity of The Birthday Party, as a transformation, this is quite a startling one.
CARROT REVIEW - 7/8
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