Nick Cave
doesn't do happy. He's a remarkably literate and insightful songwriter, and he can be one of the most intense and magnetic performers you're ever likely to see, yet even at his liveliest, his work looks to the dark side of the human experience. Though he can be genuinely tender and compassionate on albums like 1997's
The Boatman's Call
and 2001's
No More Shall We Part
, he's the man you turn to for a dark night of the soul, not a sunny afternoon. Even by
Cave
's standards, 2016's
Skeleton Tree
and 2019's
Ghosteen
were somber and inward looking, and with good reason -- in 2015,
's 15-year-old son Arthur died after falling off a cliff, and both albums felt like acts of public mourning, a tragedy compounded by the death of another of his children, Jethro Lazenby, in 2022 at the age of 31. 2024's
Wild God
sounds like the work of a man who is still coming to terms with heartbreaking loss, and is utterly unashamed to show us his scars. At the same time,
is the sound of a man who stubbornly refuses to let his loss defeat him; compared to
and
,
sounds bold, impassioned, and very much alive, acknowledging the yin of grief and the yang of survival. There's a hard-won undercurrent of joy in these songs, not forgetting what has happened to him and his family but embracing the future and its possibilities. Where the
Bad Seeds
' work on the previous two albums was spare,
is muscular and dynamic, with the musicians lending a broad and vivid tonal palate to
's songs that feels theatrical without crossing the line into melodrama. The same can be said of
's vocals; he sings from the heart and delivers some of the most emotionally resonant work of his career on this album.
were records that
needed to make as he worked through one of the darkest periods of his life, and he needed to make
every bit as much. 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
has ever made. ~ Mark Deming