CONTRACT OF LOVE

He is a powerful voice backed by a forceful band, an entertainer who shirtfronts his fans while elevating them; a singer-poet-preacher who roars about suffering while channelling exaltation. He is Warracknabeal born global citizen Nick Cave, and his latest album is Wild God.

If you follow Cave’s music, you already know that Wild God has been very well received by critics and fans alike. In fact, if you are a convert, you probably already own it. This piece offers some wobbly brushstrokes that point vaguely and, in all likelihood inaccurately towards what you might expect if you take the plunge on something unknown, and enter the cave of church.

The album begins with a crepuscular radiance, so full of sunset fool’s gold and synthesised strings that the chorus could well be a bunch of tattooed seraphim peeking out from behind late afternoon clouds. "Song of the Lake" is rich and resigned and the perfect opening for the album, "a record full of secrets"¹. 

The title song comes next, "the primary point of propulsion" according to Nick. The impressionistic story moves through many moods, it is a huge song that veers between grief and supplication. Cave’s delivery is similarly kaleidoscopic, he entreats the gods and sings about a girl who made love "with a kind of efficient gloom", revelling in the final word. "Frogs" is "truly epic" and seems to celebrate both our absurd humanity (froggyness) and resilience. The sound, the strings, the chorus, the band, the brass… it’s as overwhelming as a hundred piece orchestra crammed into a wayside chapel.

"Joy" has a beautiful piano and horn introduction before, surprisingly, opening lyrically with a blues trope, soon derailed. Apparently at one point the album was destined to be called Joy. This track is directly spiritual in the sense of connection with the afterlife, like a bedside homily proffering redemption perhaps, a mercy that expands to embrace the world.

The first side ends with the dreamy triple-time sway of "Final Rescue Attempt", a song of devotion and gratitude that name-checks Castlemaine, except it’s Castellain. But that small detail is unimportant in the bigger picture; "Wild God" name-checks three continents.

Cave has said that the album’s central song is "Conversion", whose thundering ocean swell opens side two. This massive Cathedral-filler is mighty impressive, yet for this non-believer, more moving was the tender entreaty of "Cinnamon Horses" with its’ subdued yet heart-felt offering of hope.

I told my friends that life was good

That love would endure if it could

Amongst the enigmatic phrases and striking images—a dozen white vampires under a strawberry moon (… a goth stalking squad?)—the simplicity of "Cinnamon Horses" strikes home, coming, as it does, from a heart so grievously wounded. I was poignantly reminded of the great Leonard Cohen lyric, there is a crack, a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in ("Anthem").

The brief, final piece—"As the Waters Cover the Sea"—is a benediction, the interpretation reinforced by an upper case He. It’s a gentle, reassuring ending to an album whose coat of many colours contrasts starkly with the plain cover design. 

As an epilogue, here is an excerpt of a recorded phone message from Anita Lane to Nick Cave, the postscript to the open-hearted "O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She is)":

We tried to write a contract of love, 

But we only got as far as doing the border. 

There was never any words in it

Nick Cave’s Wild God offers us that empty canvas, its perimeter an ornate, dense, ten-song tract enfolding a space where we can write our own contract of love. Got your pen?

1. All quotes from entries in The Red Hand Files, an extraordinary, life affirming web site where fans ask Nick Cave questions, and he answers. 

© Bruce Jenkins—December 2024