Nick Cave begins work on the new album Bad Seeds and shares the first lyrics of the songs

Nick Cave has confirmed that he has started work on a new Bad Seeds album, sharing early lyric ideas.

Last year, Cave said he planned to write a new album once his touring commitments were over.

“It’s about a man sitting in his space and dealing with a complete lack of ideas about things,” he said on stage at London’s Southbank Centre. “I don’t collect ideas, I don’t write stuff or give myself a cool title or whatever. I don’t do those things. I make an appointment, sit down and start writing a record.”

Now Cave has confirmed that the writing process for the album is underway. Responding to a question from Fred about his plans for 2023, Cave wrote on his blog, The Red Hand Files: “My plan for this year is to record a new record with the Bad Seeds. That’s the good news and the bad news. Good news because you don’t want a new Bad Seeds record? Bad news because I have to write it.”

He added that he started the process at 9am on New Year’s Day. “Now we are at January 6. It is almost a week and I have written some things, but they are not very good, or maybe they are, it is difficult to tell,” he said.

“It’s the same with every record, I get that familiar feeling of missing, because I’m a big dumb thing in a white suit. I’m in a bad mood and Susie [Bick] he has been gone for a week. Anything like a creative impulse is buried in some mossy hole, asleep.”

Cave went on to say that he has to “motivate [a la inspiración] to come out of his lethargy. It becomes a bone of contention, punitive and eye-catching.”

“I’ve got this horrible singing voice in my head that rhymes, like crazy. Like sad,” he said, before sharing the first lyrics he’s written for Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds’ upcoming album .

“Uushering in the year he kneeled down / And crushed his brother’s head with a bone,” wrote Cave. “I thought it was a good way to start a record, but it also felt terminal and wasn’t really going anywhere.”

He then shared the updated lyrics: “Ushering in the new year he knelt / And crushed his brother’s head with a bone / It’s my privilege to walk home with you / In the rain / Jumping inside my coat.

“The frogs jumped a ditch to God / Amazed with love, surprised with pain / Amazed landed back in the ditch.”

“And that seems to me to sum it up,” continued Cave. “Lyric writing sucks. It’s like jumping frogs, Fred. It sucks. It’s a quagmire. It really hurts. It comes in streaks, but few and far between. There’s something obscene about this whole thing. Like rhyme crimes. I hope this doesn’t last long. I’m really scared.”

Cave previously said that inspiration “is not something you find, or that offers itself to you.”

Nick Cave’s last album with The Bad Seeds, ‘Gosteen’, came out in 2019. “A lot of people have said that Ghosteen is a sad record, but I don’t think it is at all,” Cave said at the time. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more uplifting and joyful record.