Speaking to the Tonight Show recently, as he made the press rounds to promote his latest record, Nick Cave stumbled upon a succinctly powerful realization: “[Music] is one of the last legitimate opportunities we have for a transcendent experience.” A line that might have come off cliché from many other artists, coming from him it felt overwhelmingly earnest. Though threads of spirituality, existentialism, and faith have long run through Cave’s work, lately he’s become something of a Messiah himself.

Nick Cave has had quite the decade. In the span of seven years, he lost two sons, one in 2015 and the next in 2022. But instead of shutting down and hiding himself away, Cave has managed to absorb grief and reflect back hope. While Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds may have come up as a broody, at times violent, post-punk project that reveled in darkness, the band’s latest iteration sees the group step into the light.

It's not an entirely unexpected twist. Cave’s two previous Bad Seeds records — Ghosteen and Skeleton Tree — both addressed grief head-on. In 2018, he also started The Red Hand Files, an ask-me-anything style webpage where fans are invited to send in their most pressing, personal questions. In return, they receive Marcus Aurelius-esque musings from Cave, who seems his most relaxed and most open in his writing on the site. Then, in 2022, Cave released Faith, Hope, and Carnage, a book adapted from a series of conversations Cave had with musician/journalist Seán O’Hagan that reads as a further attempt to process his life after loss.

Wild God comes as an extension of these recent endeavors. It feels like a philosophical experiment as much as it feels like an alternative record — though it’s certainly more of a return to the traditional sound and feel of Bad Seeds than its ambient predecessor Ghosteen. It’s an album for the inquisitive listener, an album that asks just how much about faith and loss and joy can be conveyed and examined through composition.

Naturally, then, what’s perhaps most impressive about this album is its literary qualities. On “Frogs,” Cave dissects biblical narratives, following a couple on the way home from church and borrowing from the story of Cain and Abel to interrogate the human condition of suffering. On “Joy,” a wild ghost visits Cave and cries out: “We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy.” We can only wonder — and perhaps should even infer — if this is the return of Cave’s son, granting him permission to find slivers of happiness in his mortal life once again.

The album’s production rises to meet its thematic moments. Backing gospel choruses abound to support Cave’s harrowing voice across the record, complete with powerful orchestral arrangements to match. Opening track “Song of the Lake” begins the record with a jolt of energy. Syncopated drums, electronica strings, church-bell embellishments, and pulsating bass line wash over listeners like a buoyant wall of sound. It’s a song meant for running barefoot in the tall grass or lying flat on your back to look at the moon. It feels exactly like what Cave meant when he described music as a legitimate opportunity for transcendence. That expansive mood continues throughout the album, even as it takes twists and turns through the pensive, the dark, and the optimistic.

Wild God’s closing notes are, comparatively, simple. Clocking in at just over two minutes, “As The Waters Cover The Sea” is the shortest track on an album of otherwise lengthy (mostly for better) contributions. It reads like a prayer. Rather than following a winding path of guitars, horns, strings, and drums, the track only features a piano, Cave, and the choir. But even using only these three elements, the album reaches its most beautiful high. Exaltation in its purest form. As it ends, Cave and the choir offer a mediation for the common good: “He will bring good tidings to all things.” And so ends with it the record, leaving each listener touched by its promise even the most harrowing pains shall not just be overcome, but transformed for the better.

Pre-order Wild God by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds HERE