Musings On Music I - Wild God

These past few weeks, I have been thinking a lot about music - and about how so much about it is dependent on time and place. Back when I was in high school, I am thinking 1988 or so, I was introduced to Nick Cave by Lars Tomren Støring, one of the new friends I had made with a great taste in music. And I should probably point out that when I said he introduced me to him, I am really talking about his music - I have not met the man himself (although I finally have seen him live - and I will see him live again in Detroit on April 19, 2025 - but this time with The Bad Seeds). The album that launched my love for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds was Tender Prey, with The Mercy Seat as the focal point (later covered very successfully by Johnny Cash), and ever since, he has been a fixture in my record collection - and in my musical taste. The next album, The Good Son (1990), was the one most of my other friends discovered, but I kept going back to Tender Prey. The Good Son was followed by a string of great albums: Henry’s Dream (1992), Let Love In (1994), Murder Ballads (1996), and The Boatman’s Call (1997). It is quite an impressive string if albums, and while I mainly go back to Henry’s Dream and The Boatman’s Call, I really love this series of album, as well as No More Shall We Part from 2001. 2004’s Nocturama was a low point for me, and I almost gave up on him, especially after hearing that Blixa Bargeld left The Bad Seeds prior to Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus from 2004; however that was a true return to form. 

I have been following him and his career all the while, through Grinderman and work with Warren Ellis as well as more solo oriented recordings and tours, and he has always been there, lurking, with music that recently has made me think more than feel. His career started changing with the album Push The Sky Away (2013), where traditional song structures were disappearing for more free form poetry accompanied by a more ethereal sounding Bad Seeds. Personal tragedy struck while he was recording Skeleton Tree (2016), and this style of music was taken to a long-form extreme on Ghosteen (2019). Of course, being somewhat of a completist, I have also gone back in time and listened to the albums released prior to Tender Prey, including the work from The Boys Next Door and The Birthday Party. But the music of his that is nearest and dearest to me is still the output from the 1990s, which is when I was most active listening to music - and probably when a lot was imprinted on me. 

And that is really what I wanted to write about, and I will do a follow up to show a contrasting feeling with a different artist that is near and dear to my heart. I am developing somewhat of a thesis that when we first hear an artist - and I am really talking about the period here more than a specific year, although in some cases, that is how short the period is - really cements how we listen to them. And it doesn’t have to be contemporaneous music to when we first hear them (if that was the case, I would be listening more to Paul McCartney and Wings than The Beatles, as The Beatles were over by the time I was born), but it is the music we got introduced to. And there aren’t many exceptions to that in my book. But Nick Cave is one of them. 

Now, let me be very clear about one thing: I am all for artists developing and evolving - and I am also perfectly at ease with me evolving in a different direction - that is what growing apart is all about. But sometimes artists grow in ways that are separate, yet somewhat parallel - but make just the right turn at just the right time to hit you just right again. Nick Cave is one of those artists for me. Like I said earlier, Nocturama was a low point, but Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus became a spectacular high again - and it is one album I keep on revisiting, especially Abbatoir Blues. Dig Lazarus Dig (2008) sounded like he tried too hard, and, as I already have said, Push The Sky Away, Skeleton Tree, and Ghosteen all hit me differently. They are great albums, but they are not ones I come back to all the time (although there are songs like the haunting Jesus Alone that follow me around) - until Wild God, released August 30. I have listened to it quite a bit - but I also find that the songs from it come to visit me frequently. It started with Wild God, but I find that songs like Frogs and Joy and Conversion also come visiting more and more often. And that, too me, is what makes an album great. When you can listen to it when it isn’t even playing. There are some albums I can do that with - and that is happening with Wild God to me right now. 

I don’t know that I will think that any of his albums will top the series he released from Tender Prey in 1988 through The Boatman’s Call in 1997 (I might throw in No More Shall We Part from 2001 as well) to me - and that is the important thing to remember here, this is all about how I connected with his music - but Wild God is damn close. As was Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. And that, to me, is what makes Nick Cave so very special. And I am pumped to see him live with The Bad Seeds in April!