Nick Cave’s Piercing Exploration of Grief

4.5 stars

Hunched among a small crowd in Rough Trade East, bags on our laps and posters bundled awkwardly around us, we heard Nick Cave and the Bad Seed’s Ghosteen for the first time. It was the album’s premiere and I was at an album playback party only a week after its release had been casually announced via Nick Cave’s Q&A website The Red Hand Files. It was an intimate session. We sat, uncomfortable, still, and completely silent until the music had been played.

Ghosteen appears just four years after the tragic death of Nick Cave’s son Arthur and three years since the release of Skeleton Tree, an album written primarily before but delivered after his death. Where Skeleton Tree was a bleak, dark, immediate reaction to a life-shaking tragedy, Ghosteen is a frank exploration of a grief that ebbs and flows, revealing moments of comfort, and it is riddled with fantasy and wonder. Nick Cave’s uncharacteristic falsetto rings hauntingly out, trembling but strong, over the analogue synthesizers. The album is not so much a demonstration of his own emotions, but an attempt to share them. He forces the listener to engage with these feelings. “Hollywood” finishes the album off by telling the story of Kisa Guatami, who could not find a household untouched by death to save her dying baby, and Nick Cave creates a connection with anyone who has experienced grief with the reminder that death is a part of life and love and it touches us all. This connection is a feat he has been attempting over the past year in his frank and open Red Hand Files.

In one answer, he described finding his wonder and natural curiosity again following his son’s death, and this comes across clearly in Ghosteen. Whilst Arthur’s death punctuates the whole album, the songs are full of bright images and moments - even the cover depicts picturesque animals, with a lion peacefully lying beside a lamb. “Bright Horses” breaks this image: “We’re all so tired of seeing things as they are / Horses are just horses and their manes aren’t full of fire”, Cave sings, but the fantasies and spirits that he claims are key to surviving through grief are painted beautifully in the music.

If you’re looking for nice background music or something to sing along to, then this album is not for you. But sit down and have a listen if you want some music that taps into your emotions and hurts.