Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Wild God.”

One of the surest signs that our culture is in decline is that we don’t have that many ways of discussing truly great art anymore. Take the new Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album, Wild God.

Literary critics have hobbled themselves with concepts like “the intentional fallacy,” which states that we can’t really know what an artist intended with a piece of art because even the artist isn’t always aware of their motivations. Even more restrictive is the “biographical fallacy” that argues that works of art should speak for themselves rather than relying on the circumstances of their creation for meaning.

The result of these interpretive restrictions in music journalism is often a bloodless summation of an album’s sound and vibe, along with some informative background info about the musicians, so that the reader is properly equipped as a consumer to figure out if a particular album is worth buying (or at least listening to). But Wild God offers listeners a much greater opportunity: not just to own or experience the album, but to be transformed by it. This is an album about death. Not the skeletons and hooded reapers that roam the landscape in metal and goth lyrics, but the unchanging emptiness that follows a grievous loss.

Nick Cave has lost two children in seven years. That’s why the biographical fallacy is stupid. Because you need to know that when you listen to this album.

Just listen to the fourth track, “Joy.” But prepare yourself. Over synthesized washes of sound and tinkling piano, Cave lays his grief bare.

“I woke up this morning with the blues all around my head/ I felt like someone in my family was dead,” he sings.

Cave’s use of repetition and his impassioned crooning create something like an incantation: “And over by the window, a voice came low and hollow/ Spoke into my pain, into my yearning sorrow/ Who is it, I cried, what wild ghost has come in agitation?”

Cave then describes his ghostly visitor: “A ghost in giant sneakers, laughing stars around his head/ Who sat down on the narrow bed, this flaming boy.”

With a superhuman emotional intensity, Nick Cave delivers the ghost’s message, singing, “This flaming boy said, ‘We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy.'”

The music shifts, and the gauzy synths are replaced by an angelic choir and delicate horns. Trust me, you’ll be verklempt.

In the song’s final verse, Cave offers up this inspiring bit of cognitive dissonance: “And all across the world they shout out their angry words/ About the end of love, yet the stars stand above the earth/ Bright, triumphant metaphors of love.”

At this point in the record review, I’m supposed to write something like “go check this out!” or “better to stick to the early stuff.” But that just won’t work in this case. We’re 500 words in, and we’ve only talked about one song. There’s that much here. The obvious musical influence on the album is David Bowie, not just in Cave’s wavering croon, but in the album’s sheer ambition to rise up and to meet us as we are: vulnerable and afraid, and hungry for joy.

This album is not for everyone. Cave and his sorrow ask for more than your ear, and more than your compassion. The album asks you to participate in the awful pain of really being alive. Or as Cave explains on “Cinnamon Horses,” “I said we can’t love someone/ Without hurting someone.”