![\"eadd6a8d7a6ef1415f72be9b5a84ad16\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/essentiallypop.com\/epop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/eadd6a8d7a6ef1415f72be9b5a84ad16.jpeg?resize=640%2C361&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The fraught recording process is documented in Andrew Dominik<\/strong>‘s at times harrowing film One More Time With Feeling<\/a><\/strong><\/em>\u00a0in which Cave attempts to articulate his pain in a series of improvised monologues.<\/p>\n The Cave we see in the film is reflected across the eight songs of this intensely personal album. This is not the marauding, barnstorming Cave of\u00a0Deanna<\/strong>,\u00a0Do You Love Me?<\/strong><\/em>, or\u00a0Grinderman<\/b>‘s\u00a0No Pussy Blues<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n Instead we find a man lost, floored, blown off course – a wounded animal – prone to bouts of self-pity and barely suppressed rage.<\/p>\n Though written before the tragedy, the first line of the album appears hauntingly\u00a0portentous:\u00a0“You fell from the sky, crash-landerd in a field near the River Adur”.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n That one line immediately sets the tone for the whole album as Cave, his voice cracking with grief, tries to work through his loss.<\/p>\n Opener\u00a0Jesus Alone<\/strong><\/em> is an elegy to absence – that which once gone can never be recovered.<\/p>\n Cave’s protagonist cries out but what he seeks can never be grasped<\/p>\n “You are the mist rolling off the sea,” <\/em>he sighs\u00a0towards the end. “You are a distant memory in the mind of your creator; don\u2019t you see.”<\/em><\/p>\n Rings of Saturn\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>features some of the strongest imagery of the whole album as Cave likens his grief to a \u00a0 hideous insect “her black oily gash, crawling backwards across the carpet to smash all over everything<\/em>“.<\/p>\n Much of the album’s music is electronic, messy, brooding, with crackles of\u00a0static, as Cave’s Bad Seed cohorts, led by first lieutenant\u00a0Warren Ellis,\u00a0<\/strong>delicately sketch in the flesh around the skeleton.<\/p>\n There are growls and howls of synth and the occasional melodic choral chant, but the mood is always restrained, sombre, irredeemable.<\/p>\n Cave never refers to Arthur directly, but his presence is\u00a0felt throughout.<\/p>\n “You turn, you turn, you kneel lace up his shoes your little blue-eyed boy,<\/em>” Cave sings on\u00a0Girl in Amber. “<\/strong>Take him by his hand, go moving spinning down the hall.”<\/em><\/p>\n There’s a strong sense here of man whose faith has deserted him.<\/p>\n “I used to think that when you died you kind of wandered the world,” <\/em>he says. “Well I don\u2019t think that anymore.<\/em>”<\/p>\n The central themes of pain and love and loss continue with\u00a0Magneto<\/strong><\/em>, where Cave’s protagonist slumps on the bathroom floor “clutching the bowl,” \u00a0his blood “full of gags and other people’s diseases”.<\/em><\/p>\n The temptation to lash out becomes almost unbearable as life’s mundane frustrations come crashing in: “Oh, the urge to kill somebody was basically overwhelming\/I had such hard blues down there in the supermarket queues<\/em>“.<\/p>\n Even when there’s hope of love as on\u00a0Anthrocene<\/i><\/b><\/i>, “There\u2019s a dark force that shifts at the edge of the trees”.<\/em><\/p>\n “It’s all right, it’s all right,” <\/em>Cave urges, but there’s little solace here.<\/p>\n “Here they come, pulling you away\/There are powers at play more forceful than we.<\/em>”<\/p>\n I Need You\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>comes on like a straightforward love song, the central character captivated by his flame’s red dress, but the circular lyric turns in on itself – always returning\u00a0to the mantra “nothing really matters”.<\/p>\n Cave merges and meshes\u00a0the lines of the song, cuts up and folds in his words, as his narrator admits his failings. “I thought I knew so much better.”<\/em><\/p>\n The heartbreakingly beautiful\u00a0Distant Sky <\/strong><\/em>follows, with Cave joined on vocals by Danish soprano\u00a0Else Torp<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Both singers express an urge to cut out and escape the trappings of normal life, but while Topp’s vocals are clear and hopeful, Cave’s are fractured, broken, cynical.<\/p>\n “They told us our gods would outlive us\/They told us our dreams would outlive us\/They told us our gods would outlive us\/But they lied<\/em>.”<\/p>\n The most conventional song musically,\u00a0The Skeleton Tree, <\/strong><\/em>can be read as a comment or summation of everything that’s gone before.<\/p>\n The musical drones, hisses and groans of earlier tracks echoed in the ‘jittery TV’\u00a0<\/em>that glows ‘white like<\/em> fire<\/em>‘ in the corner of the room.<\/p>\n Again he calls out across the sea, but all he hears are his own words rebounding back across the waves.<\/p>\n The final words “And it’s all right now<\/em>“\u00a0<\/i><\/span>hint at resolution, but there are no easy solutions here, no happy endings “nothing is free”.<\/em><\/p>\n In less skilled hands, such an intense study of a father’s grief, could have been mawkish, dispiriting or voyeuristic.<\/p>\n But though he may be irrevocably changed as an artist, Cave’s songwriting and storytelling powers are as strong as ever.<\/p>\n He’s never been afraid to confront death in his work, but in the past his imagery has been cinematic, theatrical and shot through with black humour.<\/p>\n There’s no laughter here, only\u00a0stark, unrelenting truth.<\/p>\n Not an easy album to listen to, but a great one nonetheless.<\/p>\n![\"nick-cave-the-bad-seeds\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/essentiallypop.com\/epop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Nick-Cave-The-Bad-Seeds-1.jpg?resize=640%2C408&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n![\"nick-cave-640x360\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/essentiallypop.com\/epop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Nick-Cave-640x360.jpeg?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n\n