Last July, Nick Cave's 15 year old son Arthur Cave died after falling off a cliff outside of Brighton. The pain felt in that little family, his father Nick, his mother, and his twin brother Earl, is beyond comprehension. Staying as hidden from the media as possible in the following year, the two lasting documents of this difficult time for Nick Cave is his heartbreaking new album with the Bad Seeds, Skeleton tree, and the exclusive Andrew Dominik-directed film One more time with feeling. This fourth place goes to both of them.
Skeleton tree is dark and minimalist, continuing in the same genre as Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' previous album, Push the sky away, which I couldn't help but find was a bit boring. But this time it's way more convincing. The minimalism feels raw and exposed. The droney instrumental swells that characterise later-day Bad Seeds feel gentle, emotional, and strongly human. Cave provides sparse piano chords, and of course that magnetic, deep voice. At times on Skeleton tree he sounds frail and thin with age, but it fits perfectly on the album.
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| All is darkness. Simple and effective, but I don't like it as much as I do some of his other covers. |
Both the album and the film are amazing in how much they convey by saying so little. Nick Cave, ever the poet, has made an album so clearly about and colored by the death of his son, without once mentioning it. The lyrical imagery is abstract and wide-ranging. Sure, the album is pitch dark and has songs about love, or loss, or anger, but so do most of Cave's albums. In the film we get a much more up-front look at the pain and darkness, but the film is half finished before the incident is explicitly mentioned for the first time. Otherwise it's Dominik's incredibly evocative pictures that create a nearness with Cave, allowing the audience to really connect with his feelings.
After Nick Cave (with Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds) wrote the score for one of Dominik's films, the two have become friends, and when realizing that he would have to promote his new album but couldn't face talking to journalists inevitably about Arthur's dead, Cave decided to ask Dominik to make a film about the album instead. On its one-night-only screening across the world on the night of the album release, I saw the film at the cinema and was deeply affected by it. The film features performances of all 8 tracks on the album with amazing cinematography, as well as interviews with Cave in the dressing room, in the car on the way to the studio, between songs in the studio, and in his home with his family. There are also voiceovers from Cave with poetry and lyrical outtakes, and some very touching moments where his wife Susie and surviving son Earl step to the front. It's not all somber and sad, though. Dominik's filmmaking approach includes some ingenius twists that make you smile and even laugh: He gives Earl a single-use camera one day to take pictures around the studio, and he cuts the pictures into the film at funny and silly moments. But the result is much, much more than a music documentary. It's an intimate and touching study of the impossible pain felt when parents lose a child, and leaves a lasting impression on any viewer. A new round of screenings has been announced around the world in December and January.
Through following the track order of the album, another feature the film shares is the sense of catharsis. After the dense and dramatic opening with "Jesus alone" and "Rings of Saturn" and the tragic ballad "Girl in amber", the record tunes down with "Magneto" and "Anthrocene", two songs so sparse and loose that they can barely be called songs. The empty depths of bottomless sorrow are painfully vivid; on the former Cave sounds like he can barely form a sentence, none the less sing. Then follows a stunning closing trio of songs: "I need you" is the album's most upfront song and the most obviously colored by Arthur's death, and you can practically hear Cave's tears in his trembling voice. "Distant sky" follows, a duet with Danish singer Else Torp, the catharic moment where all is left behind, and life is peaceful and clean and blank. The narrative is complete with the upbeat final song and title track, where Cave sings "Sunday morning, skeleton tree", and has reached his acceptance that life will and must go on, forever changed.
Best tracks: "Distant sky", "I need you", "Girl in amber"
After Nick Cave (with Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds) wrote the score for one of Dominik's films, the two have become friends, and when realizing that he would have to promote his new album but couldn't face talking to journalists inevitably about Arthur's dead, Cave decided to ask Dominik to make a film about the album instead. On its one-night-only screening across the world on the night of the album release, I saw the film at the cinema and was deeply affected by it. The film features performances of all 8 tracks on the album with amazing cinematography, as well as interviews with Cave in the dressing room, in the car on the way to the studio, between songs in the studio, and in his home with his family. There are also voiceovers from Cave with poetry and lyrical outtakes, and some very touching moments where his wife Susie and surviving son Earl step to the front. It's not all somber and sad, though. Dominik's filmmaking approach includes some ingenius twists that make you smile and even laugh: He gives Earl a single-use camera one day to take pictures around the studio, and he cuts the pictures into the film at funny and silly moments. But the result is much, much more than a music documentary. It's an intimate and touching study of the impossible pain felt when parents lose a child, and leaves a lasting impression on any viewer. A new round of screenings has been announced around the world in December and January.
Through following the track order of the album, another feature the film shares is the sense of catharsis. After the dense and dramatic opening with "Jesus alone" and "Rings of Saturn" and the tragic ballad "Girl in amber", the record tunes down with "Magneto" and "Anthrocene", two songs so sparse and loose that they can barely be called songs. The empty depths of bottomless sorrow are painfully vivid; on the former Cave sounds like he can barely form a sentence, none the less sing. Then follows a stunning closing trio of songs: "I need you" is the album's most upfront song and the most obviously colored by Arthur's death, and you can practically hear Cave's tears in his trembling voice. "Distant sky" follows, a duet with Danish singer Else Torp, the catharic moment where all is left behind, and life is peaceful and clean and blank. The narrative is complete with the upbeat final song and title track, where Cave sings "Sunday morning, skeleton tree", and has reached his acceptance that life will and must go on, forever changed.
Best tracks: "Distant sky", "I need you", "Girl in amber"
omg, this is so sad I can hardly listen to it. Beautiful music, but the emotion - especially after driving you to the aairport one day and driving Linda there a day later - it's almost too much to handle <3 :)
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