Editor-in-Chief, Music

Two years ago, on an idyllic summer evening in Oslo, Norway, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds staged a revival. On the surface, it was the long-running group’s headline set at Oya Festival, but every Cave experience these days is so much more than that.

It wasn’t just the four gospel-tinged backing singers, the hymn-like quality of the slower numbers, or Cave’s ubiquitous sharp suit and stentorian preacher-singing style, which has long been likened to that of a preacher as to be a clichéd description—even as it veered closer in tone to the Faulknerian fire and brimstone that informed so much of his early work. The concert was a delightful release—from the COVID lockdown, yes, but it was also a vividly living symbol of Cave’s return from the dark clouds surrounding the deaths of two of his children and his ex-girlfriend and collaborator, Anita Lane.

On this night in Oslo, Cave spent more than half the show perched on the edge of the stage, screaming his lyrics directly into the faces of the audience as they grabbed his legs and shook his hands. The 10-piece Bad Seeds—several of whom have been with him since the '90s or even the '80s—roared, soared and lulled along with precision, led by the feral violinist Warren Ellis, Cave's principal collaborator of the past decade. And after a series of understandably muted and sometimes somber albums, his latest, Wild God—out today (Aug. 30)—continues that openness, with a huge, full-band sound and rousing, near-hymnic choruses about redemption and liberation, beauty and sorrow.