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There's a cold air in this album, desolate, sad, dragged between synthesizers of all kinds, anguishing violins, pianos resonating in emptiness, brief moments of hopeful choirs, dragged singing, hints of fluctuating grooves, and sound walls that rise and fall with every beat.
The 2016 album "Skeleton Tree" by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, I have experienced from the first moment of its release. Listened to in every way and explored cinematically with "One More Time With Feeling" and more. What I've concluded after all this is that "Skeleton Tree" is an album to be listened to only once. It's a conclusion one can reach only if one consumes it with listening, so actually, unless you want to trust a stranger, I doubt my statement can make any sense. But indeed, why is Skeleton Tree an album to be heard only one or two times? Assuming a certain musical maturity in the average listener of an artist like Nick Cave, I can dare say that such an album is so clear in its intents that already on the first listen, most people (if not all) have received its message (attention, I don't mean understood). The synthesized sounds, the almost total absence of bass and electric guitars, and a total musical detachment from the past might lead one to think of an artist's evolution. However, I believe the opposite. A return to a never-lived past, made of sounds never experimented that seemingly appear more complex than Nick's classic style, but which instead encapsulate a shocking simplicity; this is why Skeleton Tree should be listened to only once, a quickie in a dirty bar that gifts you stronger emotions than a night with your wife, on the sole condition that it's the one and only time, before you actually realize you're just having a quickie. Many would believe at this point that all this is a flaw, that the fact an album like this can only move you at the first listen is surely not something to boast about, that the concept of musical involution is usually considered negative, and I might agree with you, but for Skeleton Tree, it's different, and that's why I personally loved it and still love it even though it keeps singing me the same old story. I will analyze what can undeniably be taken, especially after my reasoning, as the album's emblem song, the most obvious and personally the most awaited: "I Need You". Before addressing this discourse, it is necessary to take a step back to fully understand the album's spirit and contextualize the track. Nick Cave experienced a tragedy about a year before the album's release, one that couldn't be described even in an entire discography: the death of a child. When such a catastrophe strikes your life, is there really something right to say or to sing? Are there notes that can describe the simple complexity of your inner impulses? No. No one will ever understand what it means to lose a child unless it happens to them personally, Clapton didn't succeed, and neither does Cave; it's not even that they wanted to, indeed, in such a situation, you would never have the presumption to make others understand what it means to see the creature you gave life to die, even if you think you're the world's greatest artist and the current achiever, it doesn't even cross your mind. I believe that "Skeleton Tree" (album) and particularly "I Need You" are selfish songs, made only for those who composed them and no one else. With such pain hanging on your heart, you are unable to conceive great thoughts or sing poetic lyrics that vainly try to describe what you feel; the only thing you can do is encapsulate everything in a simple and trivial statement: "I need you," repeated endlessly in a dragged song on the brink of tears, this (maybe) is the only thing that might make sense to do.
I conclude by quoting the same Nick Cave who in the documentary "One More Time With Feeling" states that many think that such an event for an artist can be fertile ground for cultivating new songs and albums, but it's not so, losing a child is such a strong event emotionally speaking, that it ends up rendering you apathetic and limiting your artistic capability, and "Skeleton Tree" is precisely this, the involution of an extraordinary artist who should be listened to, pitied, cried over, and then left on the shelf with the awareness that, despite its banality, we could never fully understand what it feels like in such a situation, not even after a million listens.
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