Firstly, an album is much more than a set of songs. An album is a creative process, that take months of writing and of improvement. It's a trip to a time and an era of the writer's life. When people are commenting albums they should be aware of the environment in which it was created. What was the purpose that lead the artist to choose a darker sound, or a commercial one, or an instrumental album.
When you are one of the best lyricists of the last decades, this sentence takes a whole new level. Every Nick Cave album is an experience, a story, a group of songs that make much more sense together.
Although the death of Arthur (Cave's son) happened after most of the lyrics of Skeleton Tree were completed, you simply can't separate this event to this album.
The songs are much darker, sadder and more melancholic than Cave's previous work.
Most of the songs are stripped down performances of poems (not stories) accompanied by surrounding ambient sounds. Simple, beautiful, and sad.
I do believe that the death of Arthur, made a huge impact on the sound of the album, on the structure of it. Eight ballads, as dark as they could be. The artwork follows the same lines. Everything black.
Some of the lyrics are a lot prophetic, knowing that they were written prior to Cave's son death. The opening lines of the album are "You feel from the sky, crash landed in a field". Could be Jesus, or could be Arthur.
In "Jesus Alone" you have one of the most descriptive songs of the album, talking about a figure of Jesus, that could be a million of different people, and, in a distance, Nick tries to call that person, with his voice. The drums are irregular, and the main sound in loop made in some synthesizer. "Rings Of Saturn" is a rare moment of joy and happiness, an appreciation of a feminine figure, a beautiful moment. "Girl In Amber" is, probably my favourite song so far. Probably the most dramatic part of the album, with an almost religious and holy sound mixed up with a desperate way of singing. "Magneto" is a key track. It's the one that gave the title to the documentary that was made for the album. Quoting Cave:
"In love, in love, in love you laugh
In love you move, I move
And one more time with feeling
For love, you love, I laugh, you love
Saw you in half
And the stars are splashed across the ceiling"
One of the best moments of the album.
"Anthrocene" is a more a narrative song, with angels voices in the background. Just some kind of a cello sound, piano, backing voices and poetry. Do you really need much more than that?
"I Need You" looks like the goodbye song of Cave to his son. A mix of a declaration of loss and some old memories. Cave's voice sounds fragile, almost breaking. "I'll miss you when you're gone away forever". As it is "Distant Sky". This time, Nick sounds more resigned to what happened and is carrying is life, although he will miss forever his "darling companion". The chorus is sung by Else Torp, giving it more an angelical and biblical melody.
The album ends with the title track "Skeleton Tree" that is the most bright song. A funny way of ending such a depressive album, is with a song that gives you hope and will to continue living and being strong to face our problems and depressions. A moment full of fresh air after a hard time.
In resume, Skeleton Tree is a very very hard album. That's because it expresses so well the feelings of the musicians that you almost to start feel like them. And this is the true value of music. Feeling the authors through their work. Cave really did that, exhaustively, and all of his pain and suffer are present on every song. It's like reading a 500-page book, but in a form of 8 songs.
Cave passed through a very hard time and, as a true master of the art of writing he expressed it amazingly.
It's sad, but sad is beautiful and so is the album, truly honest and beautiful.
With no surprise it got universal acclaim. It will be remembered as of the most honest albums ever recorded.
