What does it sound like?:

This isn’t an album made for communal listening but strangely the choral vibes make you imagine crowds joining in cathartic prayer. That I have seen the film, ‘Once More With Feeling’, before hearing this album may well colour this review as its narrative, images and interviews give the music added context. The 8 songs on the album were mostly written before the death of his son, Arthur Cave, in July 2015 but recorded after which obviously effected the performances. Cave’s voice sounds tremendous, it has to be said, deep and far forward in the mix creating real intimacy.

Nick’s partner Susie believes that his songs are like a canary, predicting the bad things ahead in life and ‘Jesus Alone’ opening with ‘You fell from the sky / Crash landed in a field’ could easily cement that theory. Nick admits he is not interested in writing narrative lyrics at the moment so we get flashes of images and people and you cannot help be moved by the refrain ‘With my voice I am calling you’ as it rolls over and over.

Death hangs over the album, people leaving but so does love, that nothing matters but the here and now, that nothing lasts but I need you now. The songs often detail moments of doubt and crisis, lying on bathroom floors mumbling “we love, we love, we love, we lose”. The pace is often slow and yes, funereal but –

Sorry I’m not making this sound like much fun am I? If you’re looking for the old Nick of fire and brimstone then I don’t know if he’ll ever be back. The film suggests that the Nick Cave of 2016 is a far more brittle and unsure person than the Grinderman but perhaps this is just something he has to do.
This isn’t his Blood On the Tracks because what happened to him and his family was such a traumatic event that its sealed off from his art. He knows a lot of people think that this all gifts him a fresh well of experience to write about but he believes it has damaged his muse. Yet the album is drenched in his sense of loss and searching for a way out of the darkness.

Personally, I felt a sense of hope in the catharsis and meditation, Else Torp’s vocal on ‘Distant Skies’ like an audible ray of light in the gloom – ‘Let us go now, my darling companion / set out for the distant skies’. Warren Ellis creates the drones, the soft cradles for these songs to settle in or skitter across in the case of ‘Rings Of Saturn’. The film suggest Ellis has been Cave’s anchor for the past two years, even more than before, and he plays an absolute blinder on the album.

What does it all *mean*?

The final moments have Nick and a choir intoning ‘it’s alright now, it’s alright now’ which feels like someone trying to convince themselves that its the truth but hopeful all the same.

Goes well with…

Some “me time”

Might suit people who like…

If you dislike the recent evolution of The Bad Seeds sound with it’s concentration on choirs, strings, drones and mantras spearheaded by Warren Ellis then this isn’t the album for you. It’s ‘Push The Sky Away’ turned up to 11 and if you dig that – it may well be the best album you’ll hear this year.