Once upon a time a wild god zoomed

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

06/09/24 : Wild God - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

I admire Nick Cave's music without generally enjoying it - and always having the slight suspicion that he doesn't actually want people to enjoy it (except for "Into Your Arms", of course - who's not going to love a song that starts "I don't believe in an interventionist God but I know, darling, that you do"?). But let's see what we've got here, shall we?

Actually, I didn't mind this at all. I wouldn't say I quite enjoyed it but they're all well put together songs with a nice expansive sound and some great lyrics - I particularly liked the title track. It's also surprisingly optimistic and life-affirming, whilst still obviously sounding very gloomy. ! was reminded of Bright Eyes' Cassadega which is an album it took me a few listens to get into, so I feel this could quite easily be a grower - and I'm almost tempted to give it a chance (and there's no higher praise than that). If you're a Nick fan, then I feel you're gonna love it but it feels more accessible to us mere mortals than most of his stuff.

We're at #5 in the charts this week with a new entry and the rest of the top five are the depressing combination of Oasis, Sabrina Carpenter, the Oasis best-of and, sigh, Oasis (they're also at #41, #42 and #97). We have quite a few other new entries to consider this week - Wunderhorse (#6 - kinda gothy-indie-rock which teenage me would have liked a lot - and older me didn't mind it either), Palaye Royale (#38 - typical indie festival fare, there's nothing wrong with it but it's hardly groundbreaking), U2 (#47 - live stuff from their Zoo TV tour, so it's obviously great, but for some reason there are only five tracks), Jon Hopkins (#51 - I like his stuff and at first listen this sounds like some of his top work), Yannis & The Yaw/Tony Allen (#59 - some peculiar, but not unpleasant, Afrobeats funk) and David Kushner (#74 - he's not unlike Nick, actually).

Last week I said that Sabrina would stay at #1 and under normal circumstances I would have been right because she's at #2 - I think Nick is going to slide down quite a bit further and I'm going for #63. And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top ten, six in the top thirty and a mere nine in the entire chart - it's the beginning of the end for her, I tell you.

Wikipedia tells us this is his eightteenth album and the critics and Nick himself are big fans of it - and that's about it. Commercially, it's done very well getting to the top five in quite a few countries including #1 in The Netherlands and #2 in Germany and Australia.

"Customers also listened to" Grinderman, Tindersticks, Beth GIbbons and Guided By Voices - I know Grinderman features Nick and Warren and Beth is from Portishead, but that's all I've got there.

30/08/24 - Pretty average
13/09/24 - Surprisingly enjoyable

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