Today’s release of Wild God, the new album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, has been highly anticipated because of the very public journey Cave has been on since the release of 2019’s album Ghosteen. Religious imagery has never been far from Cave’s work, but his personal journey towards Christian faith in recent years has left many wondering what this album might reveal. While the album leaves that question ultimately unanswered (perhaps deliberately so), nevertheless Wild God makes clear Cave has landed somewhere many might not have expected: Cave is filled with joy.
Surprised by Joy
That Cave is so clearly marked by joy may come as a surprise to those who know of the tragedy that has befallen him over the past decade. His son Arthur died in 2015 at the age of just fifteen, then his thirty-one-year-old son Jethro died in 2022.
Following the death of Arthur, Cave was very clear that he would not be answering questions about it. I remember seeing Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds perform in Melbourne in 2017, during their first tour since Arthur’s death. The concert was marked by what Cave didn’t say. Indeed, you could count on one hand the number of words he said all evening. Many left the concert fearing that we might never see him perform live again, such was the obvious grief that had consumed him. If he had disappeared from public and never recorded again many would not have been surprised.
But not only is Cave performing, but this latest release is marked by evident joy! I got a taste of what was to come when I saw him perform a solo show in Sydney in May this year. Here was a totally different man: laughing, joking…and joyful.
A Time to Speak
What has happened to Cave? Contrary to his earlier pledge that he would not entertain questions, Cave has been speaking everywhere during the last eighteen months: in his autobiographical book Faith, Hope and Carnage; appearing on US talk shows; and being more forthcoming in concert. Perhaps the place he has spoken most is his blog The Red Hand Files. Here he answers questions people send him. Chief among them is people wanting answers to their own suffering. Cave has become something of a cyber chaplain to his fans across the world. And time and time again, his answer has been God.
A Wild God
Cave has described this God as both a “God of love”, but also an “unnamable and incomprehensible abstraction”. Of Jesus, it is his “acute humanness—his vulnerability, his ordinary fragility” that he has found most attractive. He is a God, he has told his readers, who is real, who
is there in our grief, but a God who (to use the words of C. S. Lewis) is not tame. He is a wild God.
And yet, Cave has clearly encountered enough of this God to know that he offers hope in the face of suffering:
The idea that ‘God is love’ is a hard-earned truth, and it can be discomforting to think that His presence is at its most resonant in life’s darkest and cruellest moments.
The pain of loss never goes away, but it is in the dark, cruel moments that God can be found, and joy can return. One day you can sing again. One day you can laugh again. One day you can experience joy again. After long dark nights comes dawn.
Known by God
And it is in reflecting on his own “long dark night” of the soul on the new album that Cave perhaps reveals the most about where he now stands with this wild God. In the song ‘Long Dark Night’ Cave speaks of this time in his life, a time that lasts a “night, a week, maybe a year”. For those who have experienced grief you know exactly what he is talking about. But it is what happens during this night that brings us closest to understanding Cave. A man with “long trailing hair” visits him in his grief and sits at the end of his bed. We’re told little about this man except one key detail: he knows Nick’s name. To which Cave asks, “How could he know when I did not even know my name?”
I hear these words and think of the tumult of grief, such that in the midst of great pain and loss we sometime don’t even know ourselves anymore. And then He enters in, and tells us who we are. We might not know ourselves. We might not even fully know Him. But He knows us, and our pain.
The Birth of Joy
It is perhaps an encounter such as this that explains the joy that characterises this album. Because it really is joyful, both lyrically and musically.
The song ‘Frogs’ is a wonderful example of this, a song that Cave has explained is about him walking home after church with his wife, “amazed by love”, watching frogs jumping in the gutter “in the Sunday rain”. Admittedly the lyrics here are a wild, cryptic, happy jumble, but that is part of the fun of them. You can’t help but smile as Cave sings of “jumping for joy, jumping for love”. The tune only further lifts your spirits, with its ecstatic, soaring crescendo.
This is not to say of course that the entire album is religious in theme. The opening track ‘Song of the Lake’ celebrates the joy of nature, as Cave sings of golden light on a lake’s shore, accompanied by a rising orchestral choir that warms the heart.
But joy is never far away. The song simply titled ‘Joy’ also gives reason as to why. Here “a ghost with giant sneakers” (presumably Cave’s son Arthur) tells him “we’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy”. Significantly, the music of this track is more sombre in tone, reminding the listener that grief is also never far away; it mingles with joy.
True and Lasting Joy
So what are we to make of all this? Has Cave become a Christian? When he sings, “touched by the spirit and touched by the flame” in ‘Conversion’ is he speaking about himself? Perhaps. As mentioned above, Cave seems to deliberately avoid giving a clear answer. He speaks of his regular church attendance these days (although doesn’t reveal where). He speaks openly and freely of God providing some solution to his grief. But beyond that we are speculating.
So rather than speculate, I prefer to give thanks for what is clear and what this new album reminds me of. Joy can be found in the face of suffering (and for me as a Christian I can give thanks for knowing why). But I also give thanks for Cave’s unashamed expression of joy to his fans across the world. I pray that through all this many might ultimately come to know the true and lasting joy that is only found in knowing and being known by Christ.
