In July last year Nick Cave's 15-year-old son Arthur plunged to his death from a cliff in southern England after having tried LSD for the first time. Many of us probably thought that it was the last we would hear from Cave. Who can recover from something so horrible? Who can work again? Instead he gives us an album that is like a cross section of a man in the middle of mourning.
Skeleton Tree is an incredibly sparse and stripped album. Crackling and bass-heavy loops grind and grind while Nick Cave almost mindlessly pick at the piano. In the background we get some drums and strings. But it's the singing that breaks through. Cave never describe events or feelings straight out, it's not how he writes lyrics. The songs have no clear narrative, but instead they consist of a web of metaphors, poems and allegories in which it's not always clear how the lyrics should be interpreted.
"I knew the world would stop spinning now since you've gone
I used to think that when you died you kind of wandered the world
I don't think that anymore"
On several songs Cave's voice is weak and almost completely occupied by sorrow, it quivers and shakes, such as in the chillingly beautiful "Girl in Amber", and makes the whole album feel like an open wound. It's so naked and raw that it pains to listen. There are no melodies in the music but only that which is mediated by the voice and the pain pouring out of the speakers, forcing us to listen.
The song "I Need You" sends chills up my spine. I realize how dependent you can become on another human being. That I might even depend on another individual without really having understood it myself. Not until that individual is gone.
There is not much hope or solace on Skeleton Tree, instead he rejects God, and happy endings. Instead you get a feeling of uncertainty, confusion and fumbling in the dark. Through his grief, Nick Cave has created a minor masterpiece where all the mistakes and noises are left open, where nothing is censored or polished away. Death has always been present in Cave's music, but there has always been a certain distance to the subject, a nihilistic worldview where death is sometimes romanticized. Here we get death and grief as pure and raw as it's possible to express in music. Darkness cuts like a knife through the album and the crippling grief is so intrusive that it's sometimes difficult and slightly suffocating to listen. Even if it's one of Cave's greatest albums, maybe even the greatest, I wish that Skeleton Tree wouldn't have to be made, considering the circumstances.
- SteemSwede