Review: Skeleton Tree by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
One of Nick Cave’s most electric live songs “Jubilee Street” peaks with him proclaiming “I’m vibrating, I’m glowing, I’m flying — look at me now!” The song tells a story of a prostitute who finally gives in to death but thereby redeeming herself, removing the weight from her shoulders.
Mr Cave’s new album, Skeleton Tree could be seen as a way for the load of death to be lightened like only an artist can do, through creation. And indeed the album has an ethereal feeling to it peppered by the now familiar Warren Ellis inspired string sections and unknowable sounds from pedals and loops.
Although work on his sixteenth Bad Seeds album was started well before the death of his 15 year old son Arthur in July last year it’s almost impossible not to impart the tragic event onto the listening experience. Whatever the album was going to be, was supposed to be — it no longer is. It is now an artistic response to the tragedy a vibration and glow that takes flight lifting the personal off the shoulders of Cave.
Skeleton Tree opens laying the events bare: “You fell from the sky and crash-landed in a field near the river Adur,” Cave almost speaking, his voice more fragile than it has been on previous records. It follows on with its dark and semi personal themes as Cave as typical hides behind characterisations to tell his stories ever full with his master of symbolism and irony. One particularly enjoyable line on the opening track is Jesus Alone is “You believe in God, but you get no special dispensation for this belief now”.
The 8 song album picks up where Push the Sky Away left off but feels even more sparse and even more personal and dark than his last “grief” record, The Boatman’s Call with his wavering voice resonating pure emotion. Skeleton Tree almost impossibly seems even closer than before as Cave sings in not much than a whisper at times urging the listener to edge closer to the speakers. His voice quivery on third track “Girl in Amber” “I used to think that when you died you kind of wandered the world/In a slumber ’til you crumbled … Well, I don’t think that anymore.” And on “Distant Sky” “They told us our dreams would outlive us/They told us our Gods would outlive us but they lied.” Cop that fair destiny.
It’s certainly not an easy listen, and not just for the themes. The singing is often only just out of time with the music, and that’s if the loops and swirls even create a rhythm at all. But it is interspersed with welcoming piano chords and familiar Cave choruses and repetition. “Here they come, here they come now” he intones on album highlight Anthrocene.
The final track Skeleton Tree is the artistic and emotional release of the record with the fullest sound and its glimmer of hope. It’s when the Bad Seeds come back also the scratchy guitars and major key piano signifying a shift of mood. It is a common theme in Cave albums having the final track do this. Push the Sky Away, More News From Nowhere, O Children, Babe I’m on Fire in recent times. It is the weight of death being lifted via artistic endeavor. “I called out that nothing is for free/And it’s all right now.” He repeats that last line three times in a way that suggests he means it, or at least that he’s trying to convince himself that he means it.
If there was one modern artist who is adept at writing about death, grief and the personal experience Nick Cave would indeed make the list of many. Almost by career definition he should be in his element here — not that we would wish that upon the man. And it shows. Although albums should always be viewed from a temporal distance, this could become his finest artistic moment where death becomes personal. Cave is vibrating like never before.
