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Skeleton Tree

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Untitled

Skeleton Tree is the sixteenth studio album by the Australian alternative rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It was released on 9 September 2016 on Bad Seed Ltd.

Recording

Skeleton Tree was recorded over several sessions from late 2014 to early 2016,[1] with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis self-producing the album;[2] Cave financed the recording sessions himself.[3] Initial recording began at Retreat Recording Studios in Brighton, England in late 2014, with Kevin Paul as main recording engineer.[2] During the end of the sessions, Cave's 15-year-old son Arthur died after falling from the nearby Ovingdean Gap.[4] The album's sessions resumed at La Frette Studios in La Frette-sur-Seine, France in autumn 2015, with Nick Launay engineering and co-producing the sessions. Final overdubs for Skeleton Tree were recorded at Air Studios in London, with engineers Kevin Paul and Jake Jackson, in early 2016,[2] where several performances were also shot for the related documentary film One More Time with Feeling.[3]

Release

Skeleton Tree was released worldwide on 9 September 2016 on Bad Seed Ltd,[5] under licence from Kobalt Label Services.[2] It was issued on CD, LP and across all digital streaming and download platforms.[1]

A week prior to Skeleton Tree's release, the opening track from the album, "Jesus Alone", was released. A music video directed by Andrew Dominik accompanied the release and featured black-and-white footage from One More Time with Feeling.[6] The film—featuring performances by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and "accompanied by Cave's intermittent narration and improvised rumination"—is due to premiere in cinemas worldwide on 8 September, the day before Skeleton Tree's official release.[1]

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
The Independent[7]
London Evening Standard[8]
NME5/5[9]
Rolling Stone[10]

In a five-out-of-five-star review for the London Evening Standard, John Aizlewood called Skeleton Tree a "breathtakingly beautiful, grief-strewn record, sometimes direct, sometimes allegorical" and praised both the album's "tender and restrained" music and Cave's "more broken and more uncertain" vocals; Aizlewood summarised Skeleton Tree as a "staggering achievement, the one for which Nick Cave will always be remembered."[8] An early first-listen review in the Guardian referred to the album as "unsurprisingly, a very dark record" but said "there is also beauty, empathy and love as it veers between bewildered numbness and heartbreaking profundity". The Guardian's Dave Simpson likened Cave's "instinctive howl from the heart and gut" to Johnny Cash's cover version of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt", saying "the frailties, wounds and vulnerabilities in his voice give the record its strength and humanity"; Simpson rated Skeleton Tree a full five-star rating and summarised it as "a masterpiece of love and devastation".[11] The Independent also rated the album five-out-of-five stars, with reviewer Jess Denham writing that Cave's "experience of bereavement is blisteringly undiluted" and calling Skeleton Tree "a beautiful, shatteringly visceral portrait of grief".[7]

Writing for Rolling Stone, reviewer Kory Grow referred to Cave as "the dean of literary gothic song-craft, a master of wordplay, symbolism and irony" and described how on Skeleton Tree he was "bearing his soul like never before. Grow added that the album "resonates with raw, emotional intensity in a stunning way" and gave it a four-out-of-five-star rating.[10] NME awarded the album a five-out-of-five rating, with reviewer Barry Nicolson calling it a "masterpiece" and "both beautiful and harrowing, hard to listen to but even harder to look away from."[9]

Track listing

All lyrics are written by Nick Cave; all music is composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis

No.TitleLength
1."Jesus Alone"5:52
2."Rings of Saturn"3:28
3."Girl in Amber"4:51
4."Magneto"5:22
5."Anthrocene"4:34
6."I Need You"5:58
7."Distant Sky"5:36
8."Skeleton Tree"4:01
Total length:39:42

Personnel

All personnel credits adapted from Skeleton Tree's album notes.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Skeleton Tree". Nick Cave. Retrieved 5 September 2016. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |website= (help)
  2. ^ a b c d e Skeleton Tree (Album notes). Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Bad Seed Ltd. 2016. BS009V.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  3. ^ a b Thompson, Anne (29 August 2016). "Nick Cave's Tragedy and the Very Beautiful Music Documentary: An Interview With 'One More Time With Feeling' Director Andrew Dominik". IndieWire. Penske Media Corporation. Retrieved 5 September 2016.
  4. ^ Elgot, Jessica; Khomami, Nadia (15 July 2015). "Nick Cave's son dies after Brighton chalk cliffs fall | UK news". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 5 September 2016.
  5. ^ Lozano, Kevin; Monroe, Jazz (2 June 2016). "Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Announce New Album Skeleton Tree". Pitchfork. Condé Nast. Retrieved 2 June 2016.
  6. ^ Lozano, Kevin (1 September 2016). "Watch Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' New "Jesus Alone" Video". Pitchfork. Condé Nast. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  7. ^ a b Denham, Jess (9 September 2016). "Skeleton Tree, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, first listen review: a beautiful, shatteringly visceral portrait of grief". The Independent. Independent Print. Retrieved 9 September 2016.
  8. ^ a b Aizlewood, John (9 September 2016). "Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Skeleton Tree review: 'a breathtakingly beautiful, grief-strewn record'". London Evening Standard. Daily Mail and General Trust. Retrieved 9 September 2016.
  9. ^ a b Nicolson, Barry (9 September 2016). "Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – 'Skeleton Tree' Review". NME. Time UK. Retrieved 9 September 2016.
  10. ^ a b Grow, Kory (9 September 2016). "Review: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 'Skeleton Tree'". Rolling Stone. Wenner Media. Retrieved 9 September 2016.
  11. ^ Simpson, Dave (9 September 2016). "Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Skeleton Tree first-listen review – a masterpiece of love and devastation | Music". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 9 September 2016.
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