The album enters your speakers mid-song. There is no introduction or extended build-up. "Song Of The Lake" swirls triumphantly into the room and you wonder where the hell it has been all your life. Because after a decade of grief and suffering, trauma and death, Wild God is Nick Cave's LIFE album. Or, as someone on the Internet has commented, "Nick's so fucking back that I'm not sure anyone's ever been as back as him".
Wild God is not exactly straightforward but it does not hide under any pretense. It is filled with joyous, expressive sound that swallows everything around. Grand orchestration, powerful piano chords, expansive backing vocals... So much so that there is a sense that the album is simply too big to clock in under 45 minutes. It almost feels like it should have been a double or even a triple album. Instead, Wild God is a concerted, life-affirming explosion of pure joy.
It is a beautifully sequenced, well thought-through album that only puts a foot wrong once, when in the otherwise excellent "O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)" Warren Ellis chooses to do the disturbing vocoder thing that reminds me of Bon Iver and thus fills my heart with cold dread. The song itself is Cave's heartfelt tribute to the great Anita Lane (whose two solo albums are essential listening as far as I'm concerned) and manages to be both anthemic and understated.
Wild God is a forward-looking album (and will sound fantastic live) but the past is not entirely behind it. The piano that cuts through "Final Rescue Attempt" is reminiscent of No More Shall We Part. "Cinnamon Horses" is informed by Ghosteen. The album overall has the glorious, freewheeling spirit of Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus to it. And it is also as entertaining as "White Elephant", with certain songs featuring multiple sections (the title song, for instance, or my current favourite "Conversion").
Other than the rather oblique but amusing "Frogs", the lyrics of Wild God are fairly simple. But that is perhaps the whole point. Again, it is a LIFE album. Perhaps the LIFE album, and life is not to be fucked with. Quite simply, it is there to be lived.
