(London) “When I listen to this record, I smile”: Australian artist Nick Cave, whose last albums were haunted by the deaths of his two sons, gives way to joy with Wild Godwhich comes out Friday.
It’s a new Nick Cave who appears Thursday night in London in front of journalists and a few fans to present his album. He remains the eternal dandy in a dark suit and long brown hair, but the tormented rocker jokes, appears relaxed and even light.
Wild God is the 18the album by Nick Cave with his band the Bad Seeds.
“It’s a happy record,” says the singer-songwriter. Wild Godit is the sound of the curtain parting and the light streaming in […]. There is hope. There is wonder too.”
The 66-year-old Australian, who has a career spanning more than 40 years, fills concert halls, without being a mainstream audience.
One of his greatest popular successes was his song of macabre romanticism Where the Wild Roses Grow with Australian pop star Kylie Minogue in 1995.
More recently, one of his songs, the disturbing Red Right Handwas chosen for the opening credits of the series Peaky Blinders, about Birmingham gangsters.
On Thursday evening, he talks about some of the tracks from his new album, such as Frogs, Conversionwhich give him “a fucking big smile.”
The music is intense, softened by choirs. He almost called this new album Joythe title of one of the songs.
What a contrast to his last album with the Bad Seeds, Ghosteen (2019), desperately sad, which was imbued with the memory of his son Arthur, who died in 2015 at the age of 15, falling from a cliff in Brighton in the south of England.
In spring 2022, Nick Cave also lost his son Jethro Lazenby, 31. The cause of death has not been made public.
In songs and concerts he recounted his pain.
“The soul of my fans”
But Wild God marks a new stage in mourning: when life takes back its rights. “The record does not turn away from certain things. It reveals the capacity to feel other emotions,” he summarizes.
Physically, Nick Cave looks as if he hasn’t changed in years. “The effect of 20 years of heroin addiction? And a good face cream,” he jokes when asked about it.
But the double tragedy has changed him profoundly. On Australian public television ABC in mid-August, he acknowledged that for a long time he had been “in awe of [son] own genius”.
PHOTO CATHERINE LEFEBVRE, ARCHIVES SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Nick Cave
His life consisted of sitting in his office, writing every day. Everything else was just “peripheral.” “It completely fell apart and I saw the madness of it, the kind of shameful navel-gazing of it.”
His relationship with his audience has changed too, Nick Cave says. “He saved me in a way,” he says.
He created a website, The Red Hand Files, as a way to “give something back” to his fans. People write to him from all over the world, to confide, to ask for advice after the loss of a loved one, to ask him questions.
And Nick Cave answers. Like in June when someone asked him what makes him happy. He then talks about his “love affair with cold water swimming”. He swims in Brighton, where he lives, and also in lakes when he’s in London.
“It’s really strange what happens with The Red Hand Files week after week. […]”It’s like looking into the souls of my fans,” he says.
Nick Cave will tour Europe this fall. Several concerts are already sold out. “It’s going to be great!” he promises.