Weeping Songs

It's not about Arthur.  Keep telling yourself that.  Nick Cave has said himself that only one song on Skeleton Tree was written after the death of his son (although they were all recorded in its wake), and he's not said what that one song is.  So the album isn't about Arthur.  Well, most of it isn't.  Well, it wasn't intended to be when it was written.  So let's put Arthur to one side.  We shouldn't make it about him anyway.  That'd get in the way of writing an honest review.  I mean: what if the album's rubbish?  What kind of heartless bastard would you have to be to slate it in that case?  Who'd slag off Kindertotenleider?

So let's treat Skeleton Tree as just another stage in the evolution of Nick Cave (and sometimes the Bad Seeds).  There was the old-time Old Testamential Nick Cave of, say, "Tupelo"; there was the gleeful Grand Guignol of "Stagger Lee"; the sleaze of Dig, Lazarus, Dig! and the Grinderman side-project (which might as well be a Bad Seeds spin off); the introspection of White Lunar (another Seeds spin-off in all but name) and Push the Sky Away.  This is just another layer accreted.  Front Row on Radio 4 talked about this album as a sequel to Sky, and it does feel something like that - more of a development than a sequel, but something in the same vein.  But there's a difference; a big difference.

Before now, at his darkest, Nick Cave offered a way out.  Either there was a knowing wink to the camera: think of the videos to "The Weeping Song", or "Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow", or there was a blast of noise that pulled you through to the other side, as in this live version of "Jubilee Street".  And in Skeleton Tree?


It's hard to find a way out.  There is one - I'll come back to that - but you have to earn it.  There're no japes.

And that means that it's impossible not to bring Arthur into it.  It wouldn't be possible not to anyway. Not just because the songs were recorded after he died; not just because you can't make a point of not thinking about him without... without thinking about him.  (Whatever you do, don't think of an elephant.  Don't try to guess which song is post-Arthur.  Don't!  Oh: you are.)  But also because it's just about impossible to listen to this album without thinking that, yeah, it must be about his son, even if you know and accept that the chronology is all wrong.  Whether by accident or design, the album lends itself to it.  It's the kind of album that one would record if one's son had just died, even if he hadn't.

OK, then.  Precis over.  Is the album rubbish, then?

No.

No, it's not; I keep going back for more.  It sounds unfinished in many ways, completely raw.  But so, so right for it.  It sounds exactly like a Nick Cave album, but it's also very, very different from everything he's done before; I'm not quite sure how that's possible, but it is.  It's steeped in Americana, in gospel, in ambient rock, in blues, in grief.  There's late Scott Walker in there - opening track and lead single "Jesus Alone" could be from Tilt or Soused, the Sunn O))) collaboration; there's Spiritualised, if you want to look for it; there's even a bit of The Teardrop Explodes in there somewhere.  But don't worry about the echoes you can hear there, because the record is reducible to none of them - not even to the aggregate of them.  Not the least of what's different between this and other Cave albums is found in what's going on, or better, what's not going on, with the rhythm section.  For most of the album, there is none, or none to speak of.  Where percussion is used, it's either by means of an old, old analogue drum machine, or by Thomas Wylder and Jim Sclavunos doing very convincing impersonations of one.  Where the drumming is human, as in "Anthrocene", it's unstructured, unexpected, unrhythmic.  It's a good bet that there're precious few bar lines in the sheet music; Skeleton Tree is like alt-country scored by Satie.

The unexpected standout track is "I Need You".  In many ways, it's the weakest song of the album... but, dammit, once it's got you, it won't let you go.  If the album as a whole is unfinished and unstructured, this is the epitome.  It's rambling; it has barely a tune.  It's utterly bereft.  It sounds not like a lament or a dirge - it sounds like sobbing; the the uncontrolled sobbing of a young child.  It's astonishing.  This, this, surely, has to be the Arthur song, doesn't it?

But we shouldn't speculate.

Any of the songs could be.  Any of the lines from the lyrics could be.  Cave was God-intoxicated up until now; this album is (among other things) a theological hangover.  We know that in the past, Cave has gone back to that which intoxicates him; but we also know that eventually he didn't.  "They told us our gods would outlive us/ But they lied," Cave sings on "Distant Sky". What happens then?  How do you respond to that revelation?  (It's a version of the problem that bugged Nietzsche: here's §125 of The Gay Science:

("Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I.  All of us are his murderers.  But how did we do this?  How could we drink up the sea?  Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?  What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?  Whither is it moving now?  Whither are we moving?  Away from all suns?  Are we not plunging continually?  Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?  Is there still any up or down?  Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing?  Do we not feel the breath of empty space?  Has it not become colder?  Is not night continually closing in on us?  Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning?)

What do you do when your point of reference goes - when your whole life falls to bits and you no longer can tell which way is up?  It's a thought that informs the film, One More Time with Feeling, that preceded the album's launch, in which Cave talked about no longer recognising himself, and no longer being able to locate himself in the world.

But the world is still there, even if it's now vacated by the Godhead.  So what do we do now?  We have to do something.  At some point, we have to say yes to it: to all of it; if there is redemption, it has to be on those terms.  The final words of the album are "It's alright."

So there is a way out.  It might be that those final words are Cave trying to convince himself; but if he keeps up the refrain, he'll start to do that.  People do relearn how to live after a disaster; Skeleton Tree is a grief-informed album - but by the end, we've got a hint of someone gathering his wits, not knowing what to do from now, but knowing that he's going to do it anyway.  One more time, with feeling.