The latest sacramental offering from the church of Nick Cave is a technicolour epic of recovery from trauma, in which rock’s most perverse preacher conjures a powerful public act of penitence, contrition and communion.
The Wild God of the title serves as a personification of a spirit of creative nihilism that once held dominion over Cave’s work and is still at loose in the world, “moving through the flames of anarchy / Moving through the winds of tyranny.” Yet this cracked deity is not exalted on an album where Cave’s lyrical imagery is bright with childhood visions of nature’s beneficence. Where a wrathful cougar stalked 2019’s bereft Ghosteen, Wild God is populated by jumping frogs and rabbits tucking carrots behind their ears. “We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy,” a visiting spirit urges on Joy, reinforcing a thematic impulse towards the comforts of faith.
Notions of God have permeated Cave’s work since his earliest days with the fiercely provocative Birthday Party, when he would scour the most blood-drenched pages of the Old Testament for inspiration. It helped inspire a persona more akin to a fire and brimstone prophet of apocalyptic antithesis than a rock evangelical spreading the good word. Yet Cave’s complex relationship with the Christian faith of his childhood was transformed by the death of his teenage son, Arthur, in 2015 (he lost a second son, Jethro, aged 31 in 2022).
The music conjured to support 66-year-old Cave’s religious epiphanies is a glorious swirl of orchestras, synths, percussion and choirs. The Bad Seeds have sounded unusually subdued during a mourning period that began with 2016’s Skeleton Tree, and they were absent (apart from multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis) from 2021’s brittle Carnage. Reconvened for an 18th album together, the huge sound is their most full-blooded in over a decade. There is a warm quality to the way it ebbs and flows as we are borne from the shores of Avalon on the elegiac Song of the Lake to a fragile vision of the resurrection on As the Waters Cover the Sea. “He steps from the tomb / In His rags and His wounds … He brings peace and good tidings to the land.”
Cave’s career has been confoundingly counterintuitive, a cult artist who rose to household-name arena stardom in late middle age whilst making the strangest music of his career; a former anti-establishment firebrand who was invited to the coronation of King Charles as the personal guest of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.
Wild God might be characterised as the Redemption of Saint Nick, on which he completes a penitential passage from iconoclastic provocateur to remorseful convert. There remain ruminations of doubt on bleak ballad Long Dark Night and hints of pagan relish on Conversion, but nothing to upset new pal the Archbishop. 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. Neil McCormick
Also out: Cacophony, Paris Paloma ★★★★☆
Ruby-coloured juice drips down Paris Paloma’s hands as she rips into a pomegranate and devours the seeds à la Persephone in the music video for Labour. “Therapist, mother, maid, nymph, then virgin, nurse and a servant,” she chants. The rallying cry questioning the roles of women went viral on TikTok after its release last year, going on to break the UK singles chart and rack up over 150million streams.
The 23-year-old star recently performed the song on BBC’s Later… with Jools Holland as well as barefoot on stage as the support act for Stevie Nicks in London. With her poetic lyrics and folklore references, the 23-year-old emits an energy similar to Florence Welch.
Now the Derbyshire-born singer-songwriter has released her debut album, Cacophony. Inspired by Stephen Fry’s Mythos, it takes the shape of a hero’s journey, exploring love and grief through strong influences of Greek mythology and gothic literature across 15 tracks.As Paloma put it: “We start with the turmoil, open up the chaos, scramble back to redemption and healing”.
Her quest begins with hauntingly layered vocals and a literal scream in My Mind (Now) and ends with the gentle Yeti. As the narrative unfolds the pace of the second half slightly lags but song Hunter brings the epic back to this odyssey.
Paloma studied fine art at university and her thoughtful approach to imagery is felt throughout the album, from refractions of light in The Warmth to the mystical green fields in His Land, a somber response to the reduction of public land in Britain.
This cathartic expression of feminine rage is anything but a cacophony, and as Paloma sings in The Warmth, she is finally emanating sunbeams. Annabel Martin
Best New Songs
By Poppie Platt
Bryan Ferry, Star
Back with his first original music for over a decade (which will feature on forthcoming album Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023), the former Roxy Music frontman teams up with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – and performance artist Amelia Barratt on lead vocals – for a slice of hypnotic, pounding techno.
Coldplay, We Pray (featuring Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyanna and TINI)
Ignore the naysayers – Chris Martin is back to being the internet’s resident nice guy after he covered Taylor Swift songs (and invited Swifties on stage) in Vienna to make up for her recent concert cancellations. We Pray is another slice of optimistic goodwill, but the addition of stars like Little Simz and Burna Boy crank it up a notch.
Kingfishr, I Cried, I Wept
Ahead of their UK tour this autumn, the rapidly-rising Irish indie-folk band’s release a rabble-rousing anthem packed with catchy hooks and tender melodies. In the rare event that the Gallagher brothers are reading this: they’d be a pretty solid addition to Oasis’s Croke Park bill next summer…
Wunderhorse, Arizona
Rightfully being touted as one of Britain’s most promising up-and-coming bands, the London-based grunge quartet’s latest single – taken from their terrific new album Midas, out today – sees frontman Jacob Slater go down a quieter, more melancholy path, culminating in the aching bridge: “And I never meant to hurt you / Or to tear you from this life / And I’m sorry if you suffered / When they turned out all the lights / But you’re woven in the verses / Of this broken lullaby”.
