We’ve all had too much sorrow; now is the time for joy. That lyric from the song “Joy” distills Nick Cave’s new album Wild God in 12 words. But it also encapsulates a universal mood for communal catharsis.
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Long Dark Night
The Australian musician has endured unspeakable tragedy. In 2015, Cave lost his teenage son Arthur to an accident. Arthur had fallen from a cliff near Brighton, England. The accident happened while Cave and his band the Bad Seeds recorded Skeleton Tree. The overwhelming grief is palpable across that damaged and fragile album.
On the track “I Need You,” Cave sings, Nothing really matters when the one you love is gone. He appears beaten and bruised. How can one possibly put one foot before the other and continue?
Next came Ghosteen in 2019. It’s an ambient collection of soliloquies addressed to the other side—an attempt to reach another dimension where Arthur, his ghost teen, might now exist. Cave exposes heartbreaking vulnerability, supernatural hope, a desperate reach, and a plea to reach Arthur. The album is so profoundly sad and beautiful that it requires space in your day to absorb and recover from it. Peace will come in time, Cave sings in a gentle falsetto on the album opener “Spinning Song.”
Ode to Joy
So, Wild God cannot be absorbed without this history. But tragedy once again touched the singer. In May 2022, his son Jethro died at age 31. Though Cave didn’t meet Jethro until he was 7 or 8 years old, Cave said in 2008, “I now have a great relationship with him.”
Cave intended to call his new album Joy. He changed his mind because joy might distort or ignore the endurance of sorrow. While his 18th album with the Bad Seeds continues his processing of grief, it does feel like a new dawn. To produce this new morning, Cave is aided by longtime collaborator and fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis.
On Wild God, Cave uses the cinematic beauty of the Bad Seeds—joined by Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood—to find joy. The title track mentions his Push the Sky Away anthem “Jubilee Street.” But the dark noir of “Jubilee Street” becomes a hazy dream on “Wild God.” Backed by a ghostly choir, just two tracks into the album, “Wild God” quickly shifts the specter of pain to joy.
The Afterlife
Biblical and supernatural themes are Cave’s storytelling tools. But “Wild God” sounds like Cave falling back into the natural world: Swim to the hymn, swim to the prayer, and bring your spirit down. Maybe “Wild God” is the unpredictable force of life, the unruly contempt of the natural world, and its indifference to human affairs. This is Cave riding the tide, trying to stay above the waves of grief, avoiding the endless abyss of dark sorrow.
Enter “Joy,” Cave’s healing hymn. Time heals loss. It gets easier, little by little. You move on. But that, too, is sad because it’s the bow atop a devastating ribbon that the lost loved ones are gone forever.
And What Do We Do Now?
The album opener, “Song of the Lake” uses a nursery rhyme as Cave’s thesis. Cave teases at “Humpty Dumpty” before finally saying, All the king’s horses and all the king’s men / Couldn’t put us back together again.
The king’s men can’t ever keep up with life’s new cracks as old age brings more loss. Cave, now 66, lost someone else important to him. “O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)” is Cave’s tribute to a former collaborator and partner, Anita Lane. (Lane died in 2021.) Her voice appears from a recorded conversation. She says while laughing, “We tried to write a contract of love. But we only got as far as doing the border.” It’s a light elegy that emphasizes the celebration of life instead of loss.
But joy can’t displace sorrow. The stinging pain that lingers is the immortality of love. That’s the dimension through which Cave’s lost children still reach him.
Still, Cave returns to the mystical and ends the album with what sounds like a prayer. “As the Waters Cover the Sea” follows Cave seeking comfort in a wild god. Somehow, through agonizing grief, Cave has found joy. Wild God sounds like the peace he’d once hoped for on Ghosteen has finally arrived.
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