Nick Cave has confirmed that he is in the studio finishing a new album with the Bad Seeds.
The musician shared the news in the latest post on his website, The Red Hand Files. “I’d like to let everyone know that I am now back in the studio finishing the new Bad Seeds record,” he wrote, before explaining that he would be taking a “few weeks” off from his website-managing duties to focus on record-making. The new album will mark the first release from the Bad Seeds since 2019’s Ghosteen.
Cave first confirmed the existence of the new project in January, replying to a question about his plans for 2023 by saying: “My plan for this year is to make a new record with the Bad Seeds. This is both good news and bad news. Good news because who doesn’t want a new Bad Seeds record? Bad news because I’ve got to write the bloody thing.”
In the same post, Cave went on to describe the headspace he falls into when making an album. “It’s the same with every record, I feel that familiar feeling of lack, like I’m a big, dumb blank thing in a suit,” he wrote. “I’m grumpy as fuck and Susie [Cave, his wife] has decamped for a week. Anything that resembles a creative impulse is burrowed way down in some mossy, froggy hole, asleep, I hope, not dead. I have to call it forth, provoke it from its slumber. It becomes a nasty, punishing, baggy-eyed business. I’m starting to get an infuriating sing-song voice in my head that actually rhymes, like a madness.”
In the seven months since that first announcement, Cave has kept himself busy. Later in January, he explained to another fan that he changed after his first son died, losing the rage that he had embodied in his music for so long. That same month, he bemoaned the “grotesque mockery” of AI-generated Nick Cave songs. In May, he defended his attending of Charles III’s coronation, and earlier this month, he teamed up with the Miraculous Love Kids of Afghanistan for a new single based on a poem he wrote about his wife.
All of this comes ahead of Cave’s upcoming North American tour, on which he’ll play some rare solo dates accompanied by Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood. Check out the full list of dates, and grab your tickets here.
