The 18th studio LP by the messianic Australian and band, first since 2019’s Ghosteen, is perhaps the best for some time – grandiose, passionate, powerful, using deity, religion, myth and narrative, and despite all the tragedy and loss in Cave’s family, somehow flows with rapturous hope. The title track is a central one, swelling up powerfully, and portraying a darkly comic deity figure lost in the mess of things: “Once upon a time, a wild God zoomed / All through his memory in which he was entombed/ It was rape and pillage in the retirement village/ But in his mind he was a man of great virtue and courage.” This could be an ironic self-portrait, added to which are the telling lines “If you’re feeling lonely and if you’re feeling blue, and if you just don’t know what to do … bring your spirit down!” Conversion is another number of striking presence, beginning haunted and stark, before exploding into a mass choir singing and chanting, a swelling of orchestra filling much of this epic release.
Water is a running theme, from opener Song of the Lake, which centres around sex and death, to Frogs, one in which the narrator encounters an enduring amphibian on the way back from church, and one which starts with a dark sense of foreboding, but lifts into glorious rapture; or closer As The Waters Cover The Seas, all awash with gospel choir. O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is), a tribute to the passing of former collaborator Anita Lane, jumps out as an oddball number, with a beautiful melody and piano, but the vocoder and hissing rhythm is strange. But after all the tragedy, Joy, with the distant horns and glistening sounds, is hauting truly uplifting with the vision of perhaps of his son Arthur, who died in 2015 aged 15 : “And then I saw a movement around my narrow bed / A ghost in giant sneakers, laughing stars around his head/ Who sat down on the narrow bed, this flaming boy/ Said, ‘We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy’”. Emotional, epic, certainly overflowing and sometimes musically overwhelming, but also deeply touching. Out on Bad Seed Ltd / Play It Again Sam.
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