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Let me tell you about a (friendly) discussion I had with a friend a few days ago. We were talking about my struggles with depression and my constant state of anxiety and how I tend to judge myself negatively. I see myself as if I were guilty. I'm a sinner, even though I still don't quite understand exactly what my crime is.
Of course, he reasonably encouraged me to be more indulgent with myself. To recognize and accept what are my limits and in the end, are the limits of every human being. Then he said something I will never forget, although I currently don't have the means necessary to fully understand and embrace this 'teaching' of his. Teaching in quotes, because after all, it's not like he boasts or claims to be a master or instead a teacher. He simply said, 'Listen to me. Do you really think our lives are so ordinary are better than yours in the end? Look at me, look at who I am; I'm telling you about myself. I'm sure sooner or later you will understand and be able to embrace yourself and who you are and life as a whole. I too have forgiven myself for not becoming a cowboy, an astronaut, a freaking rock star... Everything I wanted to become when I was a kid.'
I often make a comparison between what rock'n'roll music and the 'rock star' figure are and what repentance, re-evaluating things, redemption are. This is because I think rock and roll has a very important, central role in my life. For me it's the same as what religion might be for other people. Well, of course, I don't pretend, I've never pretended to get ethical education rules and no morals from rock and roll. The only thing, the truth is that I don't want to be left alone. I don't want to be alone, but on the other hand, I feel a strong urge to distinguish myself from others and in a completely scrambled identity path, I would like to be completely myself and without any conditioning. Things are complicated.
What, who really is a rock star? Can rock and roll really save our existence? According to Sonic Boom, ''Rock'n'Roll Is Killing My Life' ('Spectrum, 1990), for Singapore Sling, 'Life Is Killing My Rock'n'Roll' ('Life Is Killing My Rock'n'Roll', 2004), Lou Reed much more simply said that Jenny's life was saved by rock and roll.
There. Lou Reed. Lou Reed, for example, to me was the greatest rock star of all time. Why? Because he apparently had a gigantic ego, and he certainly did, but in reality, he was a man full of contradictions. Contradictions that were evident and appeared gigantic and macroscopic. So gigantic and macroscopic that others refused to see them. Come on, do you really think Lou always told us the truth in all his records and songs? 'Transformer', 'Berlin', 'Coney Island Baby', 'Rock and Roll Heart', 'Growing Up In Public', and on and on, how many things contained in these records really tell the truth about Lou Reed, and how many things tell us who he really was? None and at the same time, paradoxically, everything. Lou Reed was never that average man, that ordinary man with no special characteristics, someone who was simply himself, like in that song contained in 'The Blue Mask', but deep down he was never really even that extreme and border-line behaving rock star he tried to show us for much of his existence. He was a solitary person, closed like a bear, the fierce and indomitable son of a Jewish accountant, and declared that his only god was rock'n'roll, that dark power that had changed his life. What I think is that in the end, he really found 'peace', the right compromise within the microcosm of his existence.
Nick Cave was probably (surely) the greatest rock star of the last thirty years. He probably still is the greatest rock star around. He is because he has a great personality and magnetic charm and an irresistible presence. He built his figure by showing it to us as that of a damned soul, singing of love and death, of life and murderers and criminals. He put himself on a level superior to all others, elevating to something unattainable and no one can deny in any case two or three things: he is a great songwriter, an incredible vocalist and performer, and has charisma like very few others in the history of music and also because of this he has always been surrounded by great musicians who themselves had and have great personality and charisma throughout his career.
But who is Nick Cave really? Deep down, we know everything about him. He himself directly wanted at all costs to show us everything about him and his abilities as a singer, songwriter, writer and screenplay writer, as an actor. His image is that of a proud man, strong and with a dark personality, a personality painted with marked and damn strong strokes. He's a ravenous wolf, he's a sorcerer, howling at the moon, opposing the same figure of god in being a deity. In this sense, with the documentary '20,000 Days On Earth' (written in collaboration and directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard), presented during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, a kind of musical drama that tells a 'fake' twenty-four-hour day in his life during the period when he was recording the album 'Push the Sky Away', released in 2013; from this point of view, this was the highest moment, the climax of his self-celebration and the demonstration of his strength in front of his audience. In this same period, he jokingly also floated the possibility of having a magnificent golden statue of himself erected in his hometown, Warracknabeal, depicted naked on the back of a roaring horse.
And so we arrive at 'Skeleton Tree' (Bad Seeds Ltd.). His sixteenth album with the Bad Seeds released last September and the follow-up to the much acclaimed, but in my opinion mediocre and insufficient 'Push the Sky Away'. An album recorded in different places, Brighton, France, London and produced by Nick Cave himself with Warren Ellis (who practically wrote all the music) and Nick Launay.
What to say about this album. I've read around that it wasn't very appreciated and is seen as a stand-alone episode in Nick Cave's discography. Someone told me it's the saddest thing they've ever listened to and this is perhaps inevitable if we consider that in the end, more or less all of the album's lyrics speak of the loss and death (even if he is never mentioned directly) of Nick's son, Arthur, who tragically passed away last year.
Here we're talking about something very personal and that in the end is impossible to 'evaluate', something we can't rate, as today we are compelled to rate everything. On the other hand, we cannot not talk about this album, because it is, after all, an album that Nick Cave wanted to release, and even in light of everything that happened consequently to what we can define as a true tragedy.
Meanwhile, the album is inevitably permeated by a certain religious atmosphere, a theme and a certain type of atmosphere recurring in Nick Cave's songs and thought and also in his texts and all his works in general. The album is also accompanied by a documentary, 'One More Time Feeling', which recounts Arthur's death and everything that happened during the recording phase of 'Skeleton Tree', begun at the end of 2014,
And yes, it is indeed a very different album from all of Nick Cave’s other records. Much more minimal and modulated with inserts of elements of electronic and ambient music and the extensive use of synthesizers, drum machines, and loops. An album I would define as a mix between avant-garde music and the long tradition of rock and roll music and what are the historical contents of blues and gospel music. The songs are structured in an unusual manner, following no particular standard. The album as a whole is a true elegy where the fundamental contents are obviously Cave's lyrics and his voice, less fierce than on other occasions, but perhaps even more expressive and used in a way I would define 'redundant', where the words roll and roll and slide one over the other, creating an almost hypnotic and engaging effect, in such a way as to achieve a kind of 'transfer' and get in touch with the listener, transmitting his own suffering and the contents of his songs in what instead of a commemoration, which it probably is too, appears more of a celebration. A celebration of life, made by a man who has always been considered a hero, someone who claimed to be a hero himself, but who in the end has always been a man like everyone else, and who in this sense, here and now, seeks a more human contact with others. A person who wants to touch himself and others because he wants to know and feel that he is real. That everything around him is real.
For the occasion, the Bad Seeds are Nick Cave (obviously), Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey on bass, and the eternal captain Thomas Wydler on drums. Completing the 'roster' are Jim Sclavunos and guitarist George Vjestica. But there are also other collaborations. Among these, Else Torp, a Danish soprano from Roskilde, who sings in 'Distant Sky', one of the most touching songs on the album and perhaps one of the most institutional, along with the grace and elegance of 'Girl In Amber' and the title track. Even though on the other hand, we must consider that in the end all the songs have a certain dissonance, the atmospheres are always uncertain and in some way deliberately undefined. Blurred.
'Magneto' begins with a kind of monologue, a prayer, an invitation and ends in a fleeting confusion where everything is fluid and the listener is put in a state of suspension (see also 'Rings of Saturn', the tribal blues 'Anthrocene'). 'Jesus Alone' (with some echoes of the early Bad Seeds) and 'I Need You' are two touching episodes in this year's rock and roll music history and among the best you will hear in this recent period. Two of the most beautiful songs Nick Cave has ever written and sung.
Yes, the reviews for this album are discordant. Of course, there are always those types of critics who acclaim every new release by the so-called 'big'. Think for example of stuff like 'Rolling Stone' or the like. On the other hand, there are those who have wanted to acclaim this album because they are simply great fans of Nick Cave tout-court or for the, more or less morbid, interest, for what have been the recent events in his life and there are people who instead for this very reason think that Nick Cave should not have composed this album or that perhaps he should have done a different work. Someone else sees no continuity in this album regarding Nick Cave's history as a singer and songwriter and considering his previous works. Someone will have asked themselves, 'But where is Nick Cave.' And I imagine this question was also asked by himself, Nick Cave. Who am I? We, all of us and he himself first, would like him to always and in any case be a rock star. But being a rock star means at the same time both being acclaimed by the crowds and being in some way suffering. The cross is the only way. Like Jesus. You are God and at the same time, you are a man, but the truth is that you are the same as all other people. There are no competitions and there are no comparisons, but there must only be the search for a meeting. We can live our life in community and share with one another our moments of grace and those of suffering.
I believe that many have not fully understood the contents of this album, I myself may have just written a bunch of nonsense, and because this album is the best of Nick Cave in a long time and a special episode within the constellation of his discography. The greatness of 'Skeleton Tree', after all, lies exactly in the fact that it is a naked album, which does not only deal with Nick Cave and his image and history and personal affair but is something that brings us all into play and involves us all.
It is an album that speaks of our existences. Listen to me. Last night I was coming home from work. I was walking alone along the road, slowly making my way along my path. In the square where the church is, the young priest was speaking into a microphone before a crowd composed of women and men of all ages under the great shadow of the Christ Redeemer. A boy was dying of an overdose and the priest was speaking of the value of life and death and was pointing his finger against the consumption of drugs and against those who isolate and abandon these people, claiming the centrality of family and contact between men. But I am not part of his church. On the other side of the square, the dealers sat on their motorcycles smoking cigarettes completely indifferent to everything that was happening. A God preacher, at the corner of the street, was speaking about Jesus and singing his songs of redemption and love towards Jesus. But I do not belong to Jesus. Even though I respect him. The old man was thrown on the ground on the asphalt, lying curled up on himself and almost completely unconscious. He was drunk. I stopped, tried to shake him, and then I forcefully pulled him up, it wasn't the first time, and I helped him sit down with his back against the wall. I had nothing to offer him and all the shops were closed, but he asked me for a cigarette. I lit it for him and we smoked together. I asked him if everything was fine and he said yes, and I left him standing there even though I knew that deep down nothing was really fine. Nothing. I opened the front door and climbed the stairs slowly one at a time. I opened the door. I took off my shoes and got food from the fridge, which I slowly consumed while distractedly watching what was on TV. I felt completely alone and I was, but luckily I fell asleep early in the armchair before self-pitying too much and slept the whole night until the moment the sun rose again and a new day began.
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