THE SINGULAR ROAD
The collected works of Nick Cave, 2016-2022. JOHN MULVEY stays the course.
Soul salvation: Cave during the Idiot Prayer performance at Alexandra Palace, June 2020.
Joel Ryan
1 SKELETON TREE
(Album, 2016)
If 2013’s PushTheSkyAway trialled a new palette for Bad Seeds music – open-ended dynamics, swerving of rock orthodoxy – Cave’s 16th album doubled down on electrostatic texture as his revised MO. Cave talks to Seán O’Hagan about the uncanny prescience of Skeleton Tree’s lyrics, but the music also exists in that spectral zone: a place where Cave’s diverse writings, soundtracks, films and Bad Seeds records come together into a holistic, deeply personal work of ongoing art.
2 ONE MORE TIME WITH FEELING
(Film, 2016)
Cave’s past six years have been character-ised by a candour that never undermines his music’s allusive strengths. But much of that candour has been mediated by trusted intimates. Exhibit A: One More Time With Feeling, with director/friend Andrew Dominik charting the making of Skeleton Tree and the unimaginable grief which accompanied it. Dominik offered his subject a final cut, but testament to the director’s judgment, Cave said: “leave it as it is”.