Australian cult rocker Nick Cave, known for his dark and stormy ballads, released his latest album Friday, a record he describes as “the light flooding in” again after the death of two sons.

Cave’s last albums were haunted by the tragedies. But that sadness has now given way to joy.

It was a new Nick Cave who on Thursday evening in London greeted an audience of journalists and a few fans to present the new record.

Still dandy in trademark dark suit and long brown hair, the singer-composer, known for the unsparing emotional intensity of his lyrics, appeared relaxed and even light-hearted.

Nick Cave said “Wild”, his 18th album with his band the Bad Seeds, was a “joyful record”.

“Wild is the sound of the curtain drawn back and the light flooding in, a light that at times feels almost overwhelming. There is hope. Wonder too,” he said.

The 66-year-old Australian, has a 40-plus year career behind him filling concert halls but has never become mainstream. One of his biggest hits was the macabre “Where the Wild Roses Grow” with Australian pop star Kylie Minogue in 1995.

More recently, the disturbing “Red Right Hand” was chosen as the theme song for the series Peaky Blinders, about Birmingham gangsters.

The music on the new album is intense, softened by choirs. Tracks that he particularly likes include “Frogs” and “Conversion”.

Double tragedy

It’s a notable shift from his last album with the Bad Seeds, “Ghosteen” (2019).

That record was imbued with the memory of his son Arthur, 15. The teenager died in 2015 in a cliff fall in Brighton on England’s south coast after taking LSD for the first time.

In 2022, Cave also lost another son, 31-year-old Jethro Lazenby, whose cause of death has not been made public. Cave has shared his grief with his fans in songs and at concerts.

But “Wild” marks a new phase in the grieving process. “The record does not shy away from certain things. It reveals the capacity to feel other emotions,” he said. Physically, Cave looks like he has not changed in years. “I don’t know what it was. Twenty years of heroin addiction? And a good face cream,” he joked.

‘Disgraceful self indulgence’

But the double tragedy has changed him profoundly. He has admitted on Australian television that for a long time he had been “in awe of my own genius”.

Back then his life consisted of sitting in his office and writing every day. Everything else was just “peripheral”.

Since the death of his sons, however, “this just collapsed completely and I just saw the folly of that, the kind of disgraceful self-indulgence of the whole thing”, he told Australia’s national broadcaster ABC. 

His relationship with his audience has changed too.

“They saved me in a way,” he said, adding that he has created a website, the Red Hand Files, as a way to “give them something back”.

People write to him from all over the world to confide in him and ask for advice on coping with the loss of a loved one.

And Cave writes back. Asked recently by one correspondent what makes him happy, he explained that it was “my love affair with cold-water swimming” in lakes and in the sea off Brighton where he lives.

“It’s a very strange thing what happens with the Red Hand Files. Week after week. It has changed me hugely. It’s like looking into the souls of my fans.”

For now Cave is looking forward to a European tour later this year, with some dates already sold out. “It’s going to be awesome,” he added.—AFP