Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds / Skeleton Tree
Label: Bad Seed Ltd.
Reviewer: DJ Stace
Reviewed: 9/26/2016

"You fell from the sky crash landed in a field near the River Adur flowers spring from the ground..."

So begins the 16th studio album from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and the first since Cave's 15 year-old son fell from a cliff to his death. This record is bathed in sorrow, grief, anger more than anything that has come from them, before, and that is saying quite something. Focusing on texture and studies on pain and loss this record is more musically akin to the soundtrack work that Warren Ellis and Cave have been doing for the last few years than a Bad Seeds record. None of the narrative work of old, no characters developed across a series of songs, no story lines. These are emotion studies. Dark, spare, sorrowful, brief, effecting, unpolished and beautiful.

FCC Clean

Favorites: 1, 6, 8

"Jesus Alone" ***** 5:52 Slow, foreboding dark entry with growling, pulsing, ominous feedback tape loops and Ellis' characteristic atmospherics. Cavedelivers sermon-like lyrics from his newly earned pulpit of pain. Released as the single from the album.
"Rings of Saturn" ***** 3:28 - The most approachable song on the album. Echos the narrative quality of his best work, but the narrative thread is only tentative and fades as quickly as the abrupt end.
"Girl in Amber" 4:51 - Low, slow and Cave's voice feels unpolished under the "ahhhh's" of the chorus. Very nearly A Cappella. Very subdued piano and gauzy loops accompaniment. Heartbreaking lyrics, seem to be for the mother of Cave's late son.
"Magneto" 5:22 Cave's signature spoken word delivery with more soundtrack atmospherics. Very light Harold Budd type piano accomp.
"Anthrocene" ** 4:34 - Meditation on impermanence and futility (in any context, really) in the face of unseen forces of destruction. More melody in the lyrics, beautiful ethereal back up vocals.
"I Need You" 8 5:58 "Nothing really matters, nothing really matters when the one you love is gone..." A song. With a rhythm, a chorus, music, etc.. Something about Cave's forced tenor is unpolished and desperate.
"Distant Sky" * 5:36 Hymnal. Church organ. Holy and heartbreaking. Danish Soprano Else Torp is the angelic countervoice to Cave's cracking and lamenting baritone... "they told us our gods would outlive us but they lied"
"Skeleton Tree" *** 4:01 - Beautiful, lilting piano and soft brushed snare accompany the only song with any glimmer of positivity on the album, and even that is tempered with the insistent chorus "nothing is for free." Outro fades to silence repeating "And it's alright now.."