New Music: Skeleton Tree by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Well, been a week of listening to his new album, I think it’s time I can call it a total masterpieces now and write something about it, OK? To start with it’s just got to be rated five out of five or 5/5 album, unbelievable listening experience! They’re bits and pieces that here have been on past Bad Seeds records but then again it’s difference and unlike any of his old albums at all as well. Maybe the better way to say that it is the most refined Bad Seeds album ever made. They have done something new to because it’s been so refined so is as close to perfect as any classic albums by him/them. Following 2013’s Push The Sky Away was always going to be hard but that’s the light and bright album, he’s even putting the curtains opened on the front cover, then now come the dark and gloomy or should that be the black and glossy? Based just on the album cover or the lack of album cover artwork. Refining that as well as the music and his lyrics too. This is the 16th Bad Seeds albums but that’s counting any The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party, Grinderman, Soundtracks etc. it’s a massive back catalog and this just has to be one of his best already!

Only eight tracks on it which seem alot of my fave bands are doing right now but this one works the very best and it’s almost forty minutes. I couldn’t really say anything after hearing  Jesus Alone a week earlier and what an opening songs, I still find Jesus Alone so remarkable and extraordinary now two weeks later. I am cut short every single time I listen to it, I just stop what I’m doing and just totally floored. Rings Of Saturn, Magneto and Anthrocene are my other tracks that I like the best of all the other songs here but only just. Girl In Amber, I Need You, Distant Sky and Skeleton Tree are as great too but some reason I have notices I’ve put those four on more than the latter four. I Need You is the second video to be released from the movie One More Time With Feeling and has has been in the last week called in reviews everything from the most cheesy track he’s ever wrote to the closest thing Cave crying a song. It’s amazing when reviews are like that split down the middle, I find it as maybe the weakest link but it’s a great choices for the next single too, it’s yet another epic love song by him. 

Stripping the band The Bad Seeds right back to the core is a good call too, could you just call it just a Nick Cave & Warren Ellis album? It’s not really just another Nick piano album, a bit miss leading having him sitting at a great piano in all those promo photos. It’s not The Boatman’s Call sequel, if anything it’s his synth, loops and Wurlitzer album musically. Wydler and Sclavunos’ drums and percussion has been called jazzy in some reviews and newest Bad Seeds George Vjestica’s acoustic guitar playing is so beautiful too. Jesus Alone, Rings Of Saturn, Magneto and Anthrocene are the most different to his past work and I think that’s maybe why I like them the best and Girl In Amber, I Need You, Distant Sky and Skeleton Tree are the more straight ahead tracks on the album. Have I got that right? I think that’s right or why I like those the best and/or the lyrics and music jump out more at me but someone else it might or it will be different. An amazing journey of an album from the opening line “You fell from the sky” but then by the time the title song Skeleton Tree final lines are sung they’re “It’s all right now.” Could just be the album of the year, for me!