New Music Reviews: Nick Cave and Kelly Lee Owens

Two English-based artists this week. Australian Nick Cave is back for another album of piano ballads, albeit less doom-laden than usual. Kelly Lee Owens explores her pop-oriented side on her fourth album Dreamstate.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

Wild God

2024, 7/10
Nick Cave’s up to his eighteenth record with backing band The Bad Seeds. The previous record credited to The Bad Seeds was 2019’s Ghosteen, but it was effectively a collaboration between Cave and Warren Ellis. So Wild God is the first proper Bad Seeds record in almost a decade.

Cave’s style has aged gracefully. His atmospheric ballads rely on lyrics and vocal charisma as much as melody, and he’s been able to keep producing high-quality albums. Religion is a recurring theme in Cave’s work but it’s more upfront than ever on Wild God. Early songs like ‘City of Refuge’ delved into the harshness of the Old Testament God. In a recent interview with Spanish newspaper El País, Cave described himself as a lapsed atheist.

Cave also described Wild God as a joyful album, noting that “the very idea of Nick Cave making a joyful record is quite hard to believe, don’t you think?” He employs the textures you might expect from a lapsed atheist. Cave employs a grand-sounding gospel choir on tracks like ‘Conversion’, singing “I was touched by the spirit and touched by the flame.”

His voice has aged a little, and he recalls Bob Dylan when he sings “And make love with a kind of efficient gloom” on the title track. ‘O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful Is She)’, another standout, is dedicated to former bandmate Anita Lane.

Cave’s made stronger albums, but the unaccustomed positivity of Wild God offers a fresh spin on his sound.

---

Kelly Lee Owens

Dreamstate

2024, 9/10
Producer and musician Kelly Lee Owens grew up in a small Welsh village. She sang in her school choir and played bass and drums in indie bands. She became an auxiliary nurse at a cancer treatment hospital in Manchester, but her patients encouraged her to pursue a musical career.

Owens signed with dh2 for her fourth album, an imprint of The 1975’s Dirty Hit label that focuses on electronica. The 1975’s George Daniel helps with production and Dreamstate is her most accessible record yet. It’s pop-oriented, with Owens’ voice upfront. The results are gorgeous, with Owens’ pretty voice floating on pulsing electronic sound.

Criticisms I’ve seen of the record target the lyrics. They’re not sophisticated, but they fit the joyful mood of the record. Songs like ‘Love You Got’ and ‘Higher’ are gorgeous and full of life. ‘Dark Angel’ is a great tone setter for the album, a foreboding instrumental.

The music calms down over the course of the record – the closer ‘Trust and Desire’ turns off the beat for a wistful vocal and shimmering accompaniment. The Chemical Brothers produced ‘Ballad (in the End)’, another pretty, mellow track.

Owens’ shift to a more accessible sound is successful, her strongest record yet.

Read More

• New music reviews
• 2024 albums on my to-do list