If you are looking for some handy music to accompany a good wallow, this next record is for you. Also, a final reminder that the “deliver to my email” feature is about to end, so save the link…
Disc 1482 is…. Skeleton Tree
Artist: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Year of Release: 2016
What’s up with the Cover? None more black. Well, there is that white print. Few more black…?
How I Came To Know It: I am a devoted Nick Cave fan, and when he releases something I’ve learned it is a good idea to give it a listen.
How It Stacks Up: It has been almost five years since I reviewed a Nick Cave album, and at that time I owned 10. Since then he’s released three new albums, and I’ve bought them all. While I liked “Skeleton Tree”, Nick Cave’s discography is a tough field. I’ll put it at #11.
Ratings: 3 stars
It is hard to separate the darkness that engulfs “Skeleton Tree” from the knowledge that Cave lost his fifteen year old son to a tragic accident while recording it. Unsurprisingly, this record is black as night, looming over you with equal parts love, loss and menace. It could use a bit more melodic structure, but that would have been to oppose the very energy that Cave is trying to create.
Instead we are left with Cave’s starkest record yet, which, given just how morose he can get, is saying something. Heavy synthesizers reverberate through every song, filling the airwaves with thick, liquid emotion. There is piano tinkling here and there, but the overall effect of the synths in and around every note makes you feel like you are on the set of a horror film where the heroine has become lost in a misty wood, and something terrible is about to happen.
Howling out from this omnipresent drone, Cave’s voice emerges clear and distinct. He sounds like a madman preaching at you across a dark expanse of water with poetry that is so compelling you are left wondering whether it is he who is mad, or you.
The record is full of mystery and sadness, often to the point where I lost the plot and was just left with a collection of evocative imagery, as exemplified in this stanza from “Jesus Alone”:
“You're a young man waking
Covered in blood that is not yours
You're a woman in a yellow dress
Surrounded by a charm of hummingbirds
You're a young girl full of forbidden energy
Flickering in the gloom
You're a drug addict lying on your back
In a Tijuana hotel room
With my voice I am calling you
With my voice I am calling you”
Those last lines are repeated wit care and deliberation, delivered not like a prayer, so much as a ritual. Cave imbues them with such dire import you feel he could open a gate to the afterlife or another world through sheer force of will. Often on “Skeleton Tree” it felt like he was doing just that.
The lyrics are consistently strong, although I found the music served mostly as a moody backdrop to their delivery. It is a record that makes you feel a little lost, which is a powerful experience in places, but sometimes I wanted some flourishes, even if they were just dark gray, to help illuminate the shapes Cave’s voice conjures out of your mind.
The album’s penultimate song “Distant Sky” provides a small piece of respite from the thick atmosphere of sound. Danish baroque singer Else Torp duets here, floating in like Kate Bush, mysterious and filled with hope. The song falls well short of upbeat, but Torp’s voice does dispel some of the er…torpor (sorry) established earlier on the record.
Things end with the title track, where the piano, seemingly emboldened by Torp’s hopeful sound, bangs away just a little louder and brighter. Even Cave’s vocal climbs into something resembling if not joy, at least acceptance as he sings:
“And I called out, I called out
Right across the sea
I called out, I called out
That nothing is for free”
Before ending with the repeating prayer of “It’s all right…now.” “Alright” isn’t much of a balm after all the darkness the record unleashes earlier on, nor was I convinced it was remotely alright, but you get the sense that’s all Cave can muster at this point.
The record reminded me thematically of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s classic poem, “In Memoriam” which is a similar exploration of loss. Like “In Memoriam”, “Skeleton Tree” is a dark path, but one worth taking. If you get a little lost in the middle of that journey, I expect that’s what Cave intended.
Best tracks: Jesus Alone, Rings of Saturn, Distant Sky, Skeleton Tree
No comments:
Post a Comment