Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' 16th studio album!

"No other record released this year will provoke such conflicting emotions in you. Skeleton Tree is both beautiful and harrowing, hard to listen to but even harder to look away from." — NME, September 2016

The 16th studio album from alt-rock pioneers Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. This follows the Bad Seeds' most critically and commercially successful release of recent times, Push the Sky Away (2013).

This is Nick Cave's first album with the Bad Seeds since the death of his son, Arthur, in July 2015, after he fell from a cliff. Cave has attempted to deal with his family's grief in the only way he knows, writes The Guardian.

Skeleton Tree began it's journey in late 2014 at Retreat Studios, Brighton, with further sessions at La Frette Studios, France in autumn 2015. Thus, Skeleton Tree is a musical response to the unimaginable horror; while the recording sessions began before Arthur's death — much of the writing was completed beforehand — it's hard not to hear the album as reflecting Cave's emotional pile-up of shock, confusion and personal disintegration, especially in the intensity of the performances that postdate the tragedy. It's a record of unusual rawness, honesty and intensity.

Where the pre-trauma, far more private Cave would have honed lyrics, shrouded meanings, tidied things up in mix or postproduction, Skeleton Tree has been largely left as it was born, mistakes and all, as an instinctive howl from the heart and gut.

The album was mixed at AIR Studios, London in early 2016. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were formed in Melbourne in 1983 by lead singer Nick Cave, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and guitarist Blixa Bargeld. The band has featured international personnel throughout it's career. On Skeleton Key, classically trained Danish soprano Else Torp provides guest vocals on "Distant Sky."