On Aug. 30, the Australian-born rock titan Nick Cave will release Wild God, a new album with his band The Bad Seeds. It's a high point in Cave's career, and NPR Music's Ann Powers spoke with him about the struggles — personal, musical and religious — he faced on the road to making the album.
Wild God is filled with songs about encounters with the divine, which does not always take a benevolent form. And it follows a decade in which Cave, having publicly faced tragedy in his own life, evolved from post-punk's fallen angel into a revered figure among his audience in a new way: a dignified seeker whose courage and wisdom resounds beyond musical boundaries thanks to advice he has shared in interviews, writing projects and public appearances.
Perhaps it's not surprising that so many of the songs reckon with the moment of revelation or transformation. As for the state of his own religious conviction, Cave says the struggle is the point: "I would say I'm in the process of conversion." Wherever he is on that road, he's found something ecstatic to share.
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