The album has a unique distinction of being written both in advance and in the wake of a tragedy. In the midst of the album’s conception, one of Cave’s youngest sons, Arthur, fell from a cliff and died at just 15. While much of the album had been fleshed out by this point, it’s more than clear that his loss coloured the rest of the production. Religion and God have always been major themes for Cave, and you can expect even more from an album so heavy with grief.
Even without the context of Cave’s life, the opener ‘Jesus Alone’ settles you into the heavy feeling that follows the rest of the album. The track is more prayerful than musical. It shares the flow of a responsorial psalm at church, with the chorus serving as the refrain as he repeats “With my voice / I am calling you”. The song’s title seems to refer to one of the final moments of Jesus, where in the garden of Gethsemane, he prayed to his father to change his fate. While Cave’s is instead a father’s call to a son, both prayers have the similar fate of going unanswered.
The tracks that follow ‘Jesus Alone’ share its confessional nature. In many of the songs, Cave’s performance comes off as a poetry reading with a meditative backing rather than singing. The album certainly isn’t easy listening, not that you would expect it from their previous work.
‘Skeleton Tree’ is a groundbreaking piece of work that sets the stage for future alternative bands while building on somber rock artists of the past. It situates itself in between the great Leonard Cohen and The National, in whom Cave’s influence can be immediately heard.
The album ends with the titular ‘Skeleton Tree’, the first track written after Arthur’s passing. In response to a letter from a fan named Russell, Cave discusses the lines “I call out, I call out/ Right across the sea / But the echo comes back empty / Nothing is for free”. In the letter, Russell believes he has been mishearing “But the echo comes back empty”, and because of the emotional weight of the song, Cave has to check to confirm the lyric himself. While re-listening to the track for what may be the first time since its creation, he’s able to redefine his relationship with it. In the moment, it was written as an exorcism of grief, a pure outpouring of emotion following an unimaginable event. Years later, however, he sees it in a different light. He writes back to Russell with a message of optimism:
“When I wrote ‘Skeleton Tree’, I could not perceive any hope in the song at all. It was a vacuum, all nihilism and void. Listening to it now, years later, I can hear its insistent beauty loud and clear. The echo is not empty, Russell, not in the slightest – we call out, and given time, the echo comes back bearing the entirety of the world”.
Even a decade later, ‘Skeleton Tree’ still remains a fan favourite. Although diehards refer to it as a life changing album, it's one they return to infrequently. It differentiates itself from many of the group's albums with its level of personal sorrow and ambiguity. Listeners are able to decide for themselves what lines may have been inspired by the loss of Cave’s son and what is simply an eerie coincidence. Time has only added more heartbreak with the death of his oldest son in 2022, yet another tragedy he couldn’t have predicted that infects his music nonetheless. ‘Skeleton Tree’ can be an abrasive entry into Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’s catalog with its depressing themes and non-lyrical sound, but for those who can get past the initial sting of pain, it's an album that sticks with you throughout the years.
Catherine Murphy
Image: 'Skeleton Tree' Official Album Cover