Skeleton Tree by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Skeleton Tree is the sixteenth studio album by Australian rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It was released on 9 September 2016 on Bad Seed Ltd. A follow-up to the band's critically acclaimed album Push the Sky Away (2013), Skeleton Tree was recorded over 18 months at Retreat Recording Studios in Brighton, La Frette Studios in La Frette-sur-Seine and Air Studios in London. It was produced by Nick Cave, Warren Ellis and Nick Launay. During the sessions, Cave's 15-year-old son, Arthur, died from an accidental fall. Most of the album had been written at the time of Cave's son's death, but several lyrics were amended by Cave during subsequent recording sessions and feature themes of death, loss, and personal grief. Skeleton Tree's minimal production and "less polished" sound incorporates elements of electronica and ambient music and, like Push the Sky Away, features extensive use of synthesizers, drum machines and loops. Several songs on the album utilise avant-garde techniques, including the use of dissonant musical elements and non-standard song structures. Cave's allegorical and often-improvised lyrics have also been noted to be less narrative and character-based than on previous Bad Seeds albums. One More Time with Feeling, a documentary film about the aftermath of Cave's son's death and the recording process of Skeleton Tree, accompanied the album's release. Directed by Andrew Dominik, the film received a limited release and was conceived by Cave to explain the context and themes of Skeleton Tree without conducting interviews with the media. Both the film and the album received widespread critical acclaim.
Though the majority of <i>Skeleton Tree</i> had been written and recorded before Nick Cave’s teenage son Arthur died in a tragic cliffside fall, it is almost impossible to explore this record without that context. The accident took place in July 2015, toward the end of the album’s recording sessions, and Cave did go on to alter certain lyrics in the wake of Arthur’s passing. Inevitably, a deep sense of grief and loss seeps through these slow and considered songs, which follow the lead of 2013’s <i>Push the Sky Away</i> to hang quietly over off-kilter loops, synths and other electronic elements introduced by close collaborator Warren Ellis. For someone who has exuded such primal confidence in the past, here Cave sounds muted, unmoored and racked with doubt. Yet his songwriting remains as focused and penetrating as ever, right from opener “Jesus Alone”. On the first of several songs that seem to touch on reaching out to someone across an impossible gulf, he sings, “With my voice I am calling you” against a low rumble of distortion and an ominous whistling motif. As always with Cave, his employment of Biblical themes only marks the start of his remarkably vivid imagery: “You’re a young man wakin’/Covered in blood that is not yours” becomes “You’re a drug addict lyin’ on your back/In a Tijuana hotel room”, among other transfigurations. Some tracks feel almost too raw and personal for us to be hearing as outsiders. “Girl in Amber” unfolds like a devastating hymnal, while the anguished “I Need You” falls into a mantra-like repetition of its title phrase. By contrast, other tracks rank among Cave’s most accessible and relatable. Haloed by standout vocals from Danish soprano Else Torp, “Distant Sky” is a gorgeous song of devotion, both familial and romantic. And on the mellower “Rings of Saturn”, Cave’s near-rapped flow of lyrics leads to a striking epiphany: “And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be/And this is what she does, and this is what she is.” Cave would focus more entirely on Arthur’s absence on 2019’s <i>Ghosteen</i>. But as a chorus of vocals joins him on the closing title track, it’s hard not to hear the final line—“It’s alright now”—as the start of the long and painful process of learning to live without someone.
