Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Wild God
‘In the light, even the tree longs for the sun.’
(Italian proverb)
There are sunflowers swirling in the heart of slumbering intentions, like extravagant damnations in which the terminal is shown as soon as the light is turned on.
Nick Cave leaves the crater and ascends to the peaks of a sentiment that has not been used for years: concentrating the legacy of pain to immerse it in the vaulting of a smile built like a coral reef.
An earthquake in reverse: from the top of the conversion small fragments of lava rise into the sky of a determination to oxidise that blackness that has always defined him, that he has never concealed and that has crossed the pulse of every hesitation.
Wild God is an artistic installation that does not seek consensus, it travels by boundaries that cannot be grasped: there is a contamination, while listening to these ten craters, that nails amazement, to make us bow before these stylistic changes that are almost invisible but effective. Many updates in the writing, the adoption, definitive, of an absence that seemed a cause of despair for his loyal fans: the use of the guitar has almost totally disappeared, with the massive, stubborn orchestration necessary, in order to be able to flow into an embrace with the stylistic features of classical music.
And it is a triumph of harmony, the melody clings to the light of life, which in these tracks clashes with those who would like the opposite.
There is no shortage of death, damnation, anxiety, difficulty, spectres, the sound of the precipice: they are very skilfully strung together in a cosy breathing space, which allows them room to manoeuvre, but with the foresight not to be preponderant over the whole.
Nick visits perfect Bad Seeds territory, and the grafting of a Radiohead member directs curiosity down a different path. It had been at least ten years since the band had had any space, that they had not thrown their hearts into their writing. Let us give just one fact: so many musicians have passed through Cave's world but the style has always remained the same, that of disciplined and free apostles.
The lyrics are a tree inspired by life to turn its legs and start probing for new possibilities: here emerges his faith in the gift, the need to learn from bereavement, from clashes, to plunge oblivion into absence and catch a spiritual wind that blocks all negativity. He descends, he advances into nature, he moves away from himself without losing his style, and sinks into an attack that is never verbose, with words charged with a simplicity that is never boring, still knowing how to touch the wind of every beat.
A series of phrases that stun, never rushed, always balanced and mothballed, as a way of testing endurance.
Nine musicians, ten songs, a lighthouse, a voice, female choirs, the pencil that becomes a blue stain and goes to kiss death. Touching is the dedication to his children who ended up walking in the clouds, like his thanks to his old muse Anita Lane, teaching once again respect for memory and the desire to learn from experience. He visits wisdom, measure, gives her the chance not to separate herself from her old furious nature, but camouflages the tones with compositions in which in the slowness the lightning strikes appear as ravenous as ever
The irony that made him comparable to Morrissey, at least for the Old Scribe, still shows up in a couple of verses that seem to have been written by the bard of Stretford: here, Cave has constantly possessed an inner vocabulary, but he has never renounced having the eyes of the Indians capable of scrutinising deeply, to nourish his soul further. The choruses, the absence of solos, the cohesion of the band, the production's desire to make the record sound like a dictation of philosophy seduces and succeeds in its intent, as the dynamism of the whole seems to be shot through with a polite and gentle euphoria. Magnetic the intention, complex the modality, yet in the end the Australian artist puts the gag on what seemed to extinguish his activity, to suspend the oiled but perhaps somewhat threadbare approach. This album is a birth, a joyous conversion towards experimentation that is not that of his last three works, which were great (never thought otherwise) but suffered from a limited form of sensory and visual expansion. Here, on the other hand, we are on the podium of a tremor that is violent, if one attaches it to this singer, because it could deny his past access to despair, to a frustration that had perhaps limited him.
There are guitars, there are caresses, there is the chaos of the blues, there are moments in which silence constitutes his native note, the treble clef of his new operating system for tears that are born and nourished by an uncommon sensitivity. His voice is sifted: liquid, dense, full of nocturnal flashes that shift to oxygenate his mind, a long wait, an equinox, a toast in a glass that cannot stain its essence. He sings like an angel who has just finished an analysis session: scratchy but peaceful, waiting for a divine concession that comes through this music that sounds like paintings carved out of rock and into which his singing soaks.
As rarely happens to him, he writes unhurriedly, and allows space for choruses and countermelodies as never before: something from the past seems to have ended up between these grooves, as if the Murder Ballads had gone to cool off in the water of Lourdes: no song on the album is immune to comparison, you can sense that something old always appears, but it is the direction that has changed, and this is enough to make us listen to this earthquake in reverse and come out purified, worried almost, because we are not used to the fact that the man with the wrinkle in his soul opens up a lane where light wins, overcomes and knocks us down. No doubt perhaps one artist is not credible, him more than others, but this is the wager of those who will listen to this cascade: to take advantage of it and come to their senses, to abandon themselves to a new game and lose themselves in these columns of improvised though not improvised confetti.
The most obvious shock is the sense of gratitude he attaches to everything that takes one's breath away: he does not adapt to any pessimism and builds an ark that lands in these slow processions, where instead of incense he spreads smiles and hugs.
Musically, we witness a limpid fresco in which above all the bass and drums regain the colour they had in the eighties: once the noise is removed, the feeling remains that the two instruments and the two musicians are capable of bewitching even God, playing to overturn Cave's ecosystem, to enchant, while the piano is a gnome jumping on the keys, without breathlessness, with gravity almost rounding the notes.
The gospel, the blues, that hidden melancholic psychedelia make a pact and everything flows, to return to ever virgin listening... Unsettling, as dangerous as the joy we never consider graspable, this bundle of surprises will struggle to convince those who will have an easy time opposing it, but the Old Scribe is certain: Nick Cave will laugh in delight, because the writing of this work will remain in the wrinkles of his legendary smile...
Song by Song
1 - Song Of The Lake
The sky opens up to end up on the skin of a lake: and it is the ancient spoken word that returns, but appearing on a surface that bounces the light in a delicate tinkle, and what was serious is now a ‘Never Mind’ that stuns. Slow, angelic, sunny, it progresses second by second to the point of vibrating tears of heavenly new food. The song's influence is very subtle, but we are on the American shores of old spirituals waiting to be cuddled...
2 Wild God
It all comes back to basics: the Nick Cave who scoured the dryness of the song form in the nineties reappears, in a minimalist mode that needs only this salty voice, as he returns to his Jubilee Street and grasps the past to seek in a grimace of God his blessing. The whole becomes angelic and convincing. The storytelling is unusual, but it feels like a story we've heard before because of the style, which here receives a little jolt thanks to assonances preferred to rhymes.
In the finale, the dark soul shakes and a certain breathlessness in the singing makes the track one of the most majestic on the entire album.
3 Frogs
Can a surreal delirium be the outpost of change? Of course it can: Frogs is a generator of novelty, a bridge between Cohen (the beloved Leonard) in his grey suit and the visionary creativity of a sonic infarction, because here everything swells in the chest, in the architecture that stuns. The production reveals an ability to keep the tension high, almost as if a suicide foretold was about to come, but in reality it is Cave's foresight in life that plunges us into a story that could have been written by heaven's messengers.
Meanwhile Leonard from heaven applauds, happy...
4 Joy
One trembles because one is unprepared for waking miracles, and Nick digs into the lobby of his grief, a dream that makes him feel a presence strolling far in the sky but not in his heart. A father writing such a song is a handkerchief upon which our souls waver. Incisive, with a voice that is a melting stone, the whole becomes a cloud between timpani, trombones, horns and the feeling that when the bundle of voices arrives everything is a sentence: Cave has chosen to live inside the rainbow, the only place where joy does not die...
5 Final Rescue Attempt
New thorns, new melodies that seem to have come out of an album that his fans have never particularly loved, manage to make one hear a carousel, a carillon of a suspension that gravitates in hints that are never swampy but thunderous: give space to the thin foil of a keyboard that holds this entry into pain without giving it a chance to win. And it is hypnosis that passes to the piano and lubricates the entire structure, with notes from the low register and yet sunny
6 Conversion
The eagle does not sleep if the sky is cloudy: its victims can hide. And so Nick invents one: he changes the direction of his path to sneak in rhythms full of slow beats, with Warren's keyboard waiting for the howl of his faithful friend, while the drumming comes in and the horn bends the melody for this composition that anticipates a new storm...
7 Cinnamon Horses
Sacred, austere, turbulent in its beginning, and then muted, like a breath of fresh air that has been blessed by contemplation. Devastating, it leads the imagination to surrender. The way Cave plays in anticipation remains a surprise: if you look at the structure of the piece, everything escapes repetition, but you remain glued to those delicate touches in the context of an orchestration that really does come across as a sad angelic blessing. The voice almost trembles but the words do not: they advance confidently as everything expands...
8 Long Dark Night
The closest track to a glorious past assembles the known to a swirl of new entries. First of all, the use of pop in the refrain that can be used as a crossroads: it is up to each one to choose between getting lost or finding the hand of a long dark night, but only in appearance...
Knowing how to visit doubt in the face of great joy belongs to the power of the night. The words, cadenced and well paced, sound like that personal atrium in which each of us can feel a tasty sensation of loss...
9 O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)
The band's devotion to making progression sounds bright is well known. Perhaps this mode a little less so, and it is impressive how we are waiting for a technological miracle: Anita's voice, recorded during a phone conversation, arrives to make our hearts a tomb in turmoil, after Cave's lyrics have impressively prepared the plot twist. And like a novice Jean-Michel Jarre, here the Australian takes almost cold sounds and warms them up with his generosity.
When love enters this track, one feels lucky: nothing dies if memory exists, and indeed Anita relies on this with Cave. And one weeps in the prison of this fantastic muse's laughter....
10 As the Waters Cover the Sea
The B-side of the song that opened the album.
Here is the sweet and tender way in which Nick and the band say goodbye, to build the blanket for us to sleep on, with a harmony that rises through the roof to protect this beautifully and sensationally crafted work: the fact that it is a choral form that concludes it is no coincidence…
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