New Nick Cave/Bad Seeds: Masterpiece!
The Guardian gushes: ‘In Andrew Dominik’s uncomfortably riveting documentary “Once More With Feeling” – about the making of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ 16th album – the singer describes a terrible event, which has become omnipresent. “Time is elastic. We can go away from the event but at some point the elastic snaps and we always come back to it.†That event, of course, was the death last July of his 15-year-old son, Arthur, after he fell from a cliff. Cave has attempted to deal with his family’s grief in the only way he knows. 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.
