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No Nick Cave album ever went down easy. Latterly even less so, since his personal tragedies. Each new album drew from a well of tears. It sharpened Cave’s songwriting, stripping away the formality of former years. Wild God, Cave’s 18th studio album – with his Bad Seeds returned for the first time since 2013’s Push the Sky Away – has a sapling of hope. The Wild God is nevertheless cathartic. Its opening track, “Song Of The Lake”, unleashes a heady, ecclesiastical fervour that presides over much of the album. The welcome return of his full band sound is at once bristling and yet serene. “Frogs” sees layers of fracas and dissonance dissolve into choral sighs as two lovers stroll from the congregation hall to the conjugal bed. In all, Wild God sees Cave cut a figure like Virgil in the Inferno: a captain for dark mornings. It is, against all odds, an ode to joy.
