Latest Album Reviews: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Meat Loaf, Usher, Harts & REMI
Latest Album Reviews: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Meat Loaf, Usher, Harts & REMI, reviewed I tell ya.
SKELETON TREE
NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
(BAD SEED LTD)
4 and a ½ stars
Nick Cave calls writer’s block: the baboons. His family knows to keep clear of him when those chimps take up residency. Except his family of four is now three. Arthur, his son, tragically died last year. Here, the Dark Lord is reeling and murderous, making another album because — excruciatingly — that’s what he must do to somehow heal.
Skeleton Tree stretches out its searching, branches from the trunk of We No Who U R; most of the record is a muted, dubby chug. Cave is at the wheel looking wild eyed and rudderless. It could well be called I Know Who U Were. In the home, Susie Bick is his rock, in the band, Warren Ellis carries Cave; his are the one set of footprints in the sand.
Cave gets right to it on Jesus Alone, “You fell from the sky and crash-landed in a field.” For Cave, it’s subject matter he’s been singing about for four decades, this time though the ouroboros eats its tail, an eternal cycle of renewal.
Rings of Saturn maintains the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other survival mode: “I thought slavery had been abolished” he speaks queasily, over pianos, funnel-webs, new age nods and oily squirts of synths. Girl In Amber is very Angelo Badalamenti, The Bad Seeds hush their leader with group backing vocals and hold him up by his weak, scarred arms. Magneto is Proposition-like. He seems punished by his profession, abused by his muse. “The urge to kill somebody was basically overwhelming.” On Anthrocene the Dirty Four drag his battered husk across an ‘80s sci-fi scene. You are now experiencing The Sickening. I Need You is the manifestation of The Weeping Song, he’s grieving in the supermarket queue for the second time on the album, consumed by ennui. Distant Sky revisits his wish to rise above the grey clouds, soprano Else Torp appears like a biblical figure, a heroine instead of heroin. “And it’s alright now,” he assures — it’s hard to truly believe him — not wanting to be asked any more about this appalling fork in the road, for it is a dead end./ MIKEY CAHILL
To buy these albums, simply head this way:
https://www.jbhifi.com.au/music/browse/rock/skeleton-tree/969212/
https://www.jbhifi.com.au/music/browse/rock/braver-than-we-are/982459/
https://www.jbhifi.com.au/music/browse/hip-hop/divas-demons/982557/
https://www.jbhifi.com.au/music/browse/urban-rap/hard-ii-love/994161/
https://www.jbhifi.com.au/music/browse/alternative-rock/smoke-fire-hope-desire/982546/
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Originally published as Latest Album Reviews