Nick Cave says he is ‘working on lyrics for a new album’ ahead of massive European tour

Nick Cave is working away at his next album already as The Bad Seeds frontman prepares to tour across Europe.

The Into My Arms songwriter last released an album with The Bad Seeds in 2024. Wild God received rave reviews on release and prompted Cave and the band to tour Europe, the United Kingdom, and North America. An Australian leg of the tour was added and saw Cave perform in his home country earlier this year. Now, the songwriter is set to tour across Europe, with a sole date in the UK set to be held in Brighton. Writing in The Red Hand Files, Cave has confirmed a handful of details for his new album. It is not yet known whether this release will be with The Bad Seeds or a solo offering. We can, most likely, rule out a Grinderman album.

Cave wrote: “I have often spoken about procrastination as an obstacle to creativity, but perhaps, in my efforts to encourage people to discover their potential, I have not fully acknowledged just how challenging it can be. The fear and anxiety you are talking about is very real. I am working on lyrics for a new album right now and am also about to go on tour, and even though I’ve written hundreds of songs and performed countless times, the trepidation is acute, sometimes verging on paralysing. 

“Our fears around starting something new, risky and exposed are genuine. But here lies the maddening paradox – these anxieties, the very things that prevent us from moving forward, are intrinsic to that motion. I was talking about this only recently with a ceramicist friend, Adam Silverman, and he said that I was ‘stirring the pot’ and, in doing so, revealing something of my soul.

“He said it was little wonder I felt scared. Of course, I know this to be true, I’ve been here countless times, but it’s good to be reminded, and his words calmed me down a little. I also know, in my heart, that if there is one thing more daunting than writing a song, it’s not writing one – and I think we can apply this to many things, a job left undone is its own torment, a dream unrealised, its own kind of hell.

“There is a unique joy, the deepest satisfaction and a kind of spiritual appeasement in knowing that something we have made, or worked on, means something to somebody else. We may need to leap through these hoops of fire, wrestling against forces that hold us back from reaching our potential. Yet, understanding that struggle energises the work itself, turning creativity into a beautiful war – perhaps the noblest contest of them all.”

Cave added in his response to Marisa that she should follow the advice of Julain of Norwich. He added: “Marisa, live as creatively and boldly as your heart allows. Keep a light grip on the reins, take a breath, step into the unknown and trust. Trust – the active heart of faith, a word so fragile, so essential, so easily forgotten. Have faith and do – and in the luminous words of Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth-century mystic who wrote from her tiny penitential cell, ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.'”