release date: Oct. 3, 2019
format: digital (11 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 4 / 5] [4,08]
producer: Nick Cave & Warren Ellis
label: Ghosteen Ltd. - nationality: Australia
Track highlights: 1. "Spinning Song" - 2. "Bright Horses" - 3. "Waiting for You" (4 / 5) - 6. "Galleon Ship" - 7. "Ghosteen Speaks" (4 / 5) - 9. "Ghosteen" - 11. "Hollywood"
17th studio album by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds as the follow-up to the 3-year-old emotional Skeleton Tree (Sep. 2016). The album is the first to be solely credited exclusively Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and the album has been released in all formats on the band-owned label at the time, Ghosteen Ltd. As a vinyl and CD release, the album comes as a double album consisting of eleven tracks with a total playing time of more than 68 minutes, and the album's first eight tracks - occupying the vinyl sides A+B / CD 1 - are collectively named "The Children" while the last three have been given the designation "The Parents".
Stylistically, it's much like the sequel to the 2016 album, which was seen by most as Cave's response to the recent loss of his 15-year-old son, but as Cave himself later explained, the majority of the songs had already been written when the tragedy struck, and the album's depressed mood can only be attributed to the personal tragedy and grief he and the band found themselves in during the recording sessions. On Ghosteen, the starting point of the songs is on the other hand deeply rooted in the emotions the loss gave rise to, and the album is designed as a universal reaction to the experience of grief and loss, with the poetic expression perhaps taking up more room - asking for more attention - than the music itself. It's not a collection of songs with traditional rhythm structures, but an album that via its style without percussion and drums and instead soaked in string harmonies, spheric piano and keyboard in many ways approaches a pure ambient release.
The album was released almost exclusively to overwhelmingly positive reviews and good rankings on albums charts worldwide, e.g. a No. #2 in Australia, No. #4 in the UK (No. #1 on the independent charts) and No. #12 on the US Top Rock Albums chart. It's a near impossible task to point out the best tracks on an album that is such an overall experience. Ghosteen should be listened to from start to finish, and in the listening process you may try to absorb the musical sensation in approximately the same way as you breathe. It's a very emotional release that contains both touching beauty and deep pain, which is made for meditative moments more than popular-musical entertainment. It does what it's meant to do, to facilitate emotions and support deep sadness, and it most probably works magnificently as spiritual background music. It contains lots of beauty but it's nevertheless also enormously heavy and one-dimensionally sad and as such not made for much else. But then, art itself doesn't need to be multi-purposeful.
My biggest recommendation for grief processing and just overall a big recommendation of Cave's perhaps finest and most delicate output.
2019 Favourite releases: 1. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Ghosteen - 2. The Cranberries In the End - 3. Rammstein Rammstein
