Nick Cave reflects on the comfort he’s sought from religion and alludes to being visited by his late son’s spirit in lyrics from his new album Wild God

Nick Cave offered new insight into the solace he sought in religion during the darkest moments of his life on Friday with the release of his critically acclaimed new album Wild God.

Together with his band The Wild Seeds, the 66-year-old hitmaker processed the grief he felt after losing two of his sons in a new collection of songs, which he first started writing on New Year’s Day 2023.

Critics have also praised Wild God, calling the “deeply human” album a “gospel rock feast” and “a ferocious celebration of love.”

In 2015, Nick’s 15-year-old son Arthur died after taking LSD for the first time, falling nearly 65 feet off a cliff near his home in Brighton, England.

Seven years later, in 2022, Nick’s son Jethro, 31, who had schizophrenia and struggled with drug addiction, died in Melbourne, two days after being released from prison and two months after violently assaulting his own mother.

The album’s lyrics offer insight into the pain Nick has suffered from his recent losses, as he sings on Song Of The Lake: ‘Cause all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Couldn’t put us back together again.’

He also alludes to a visit from the spirit of his deceased son, who sings on the stretch Joy: “A ghost in giant sneakers, laughing, stars around his head … a boy on fire.”

Singing about the physical consequences of his beliefs, he adds on the album’s title track, “Oh Lord, well, if you’re feeling lonely and if you’re feeling blue; And if you just don’t know what to do; Quiet your mind.”

Nick also reflects on his grief in the song Long Dark Night, which begins with the words, “I was in a dream for a long time, I couldn’t break free.”

Nick said of the album: ‘I hope the album has the same effect on listeners as it has had on me. It bursts out of the speaker and I get carried away by it.

“It’s a complicated record, but it’s also deeply and joyfully infectious.”

The album, his first with The Bad Seeds since 2019, was also praised by critics and received a string of positive reviews.

Write a rave five-star review, The guard called the album a “masterpiece,” adding: “The album is full of remarkable songs and the mood of what you might call radical optimism is powerful and infectious.

‘You feel better afterwards than you did before: an enhanced experience, in the best sense of the word.’

The Independent said that ‘the album that makes you believe in the transformative power of love’, while The Sunday newspaper described it as ‘a gospel rock fest, The Bad Seeds at their loudest in 20 years.’

NME gave the album four stars and said: ‘With zest for life, the once dark prince lets the light in.’

Nick previously spoke about the album in an interview with The Sunday Times, telling the publication that the prospect of an afterlife was at the forefront of his mind while writing the album, especially after the death of his son.

‘I’m not sure what happens when you die, but I wondered how Arthur’s spirit would feel if he saw the misery his mother and father went through—because of his passing. Yesterday was the anniversary of his death…’

“And one thing we can tell him now is that everything is okay. I say that carefully. There is no closure. The situation is not back to the level it was before Arthur or Jethro died. But we are happy.”

The star of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, known for hits such as Into My Arms and One More Time With Feeling, moved to Los Angeles shortly after Arthur’s death, along with his wife Susie and Arthur’s twin brother Earl, because they were “too triggered” by living so close to where it happened.

The tragedy was widely reported in the news and Nick previously said it “forced him to grieve publicly”.

An inquest into Arthur’s death heard the teenager, who also had cannabis in his system, was “completely disorientated” when he fell from a cliff into the steep Ovingdean Gap near Brighton.

Police said the teen was tripping so hard that he “couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t” and in a final text to a friend he said, “Where am I? Where am I?”

In the minutes before the teenager died, he was spotted by motorists “zigzagging” across the grass at the edge of the cliff, before climbing over a safety fence and falling over, it was said.

Another of the pop star’s sons, Jethro Lazenby, died in Australia in May 2022, just days after being released from prison.

The 32-year-old man was in custody after kneeing his mother in the face during an argument over cigarettes, leaving her mother ‘bruised and bleeding’.

A few days before his death, Jethro’s lawyer told the court that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and that it had affected his judgment.

The troubled man, who spent years in and out of prison as his life spiralled out of control in a haze of illegal drugs, faced further criminal charges when he was found dead in a $100-a-night Melbourne motel.

In June, Nick responded to a woman whose daughter was murdered on his blog The Red Hand Files, where he answers questions from fans.

He wrote: ‘A parent should never have to bury their child, it makes no sense, it goes against the natural order of things.

‘And yet here we are, you and I, living in this horrible void left by those we lost.

‘I love how you honestly expose the anger we sometimes feel, as great as the Bible, towards a world that has the courage to keep going regardless of our suffering.

‘How dare the world be so beautiful, we think. These are the varied feelings of sadness.’