Single of the Week: Nick Cave and The Bad Seed's Ghosteen

By Madeline Ward

Ghosteen is the conclusion of a trilogy that began in 2013 with the release of Push the Sky Away, followed by Skeleton Tree in 2017. The three albums exist as musical outliers within The Bad Seeds’ back-catalogue, marking a (temporary?) shift to an atmospheric, cinematic sound for the band that is heavily influenced by more experimental Grinderman, as well as the scores that Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have written for films in recent years. Ghosteen feels like more of an exaltation than its predecessors, albeit one that is still heavily laced with melancholy. The tension and relationship between joy and grief is most present in its titular track, a 12 minute b-side epic that the band has called one of the “parent” songs of the album. 

Ghosteen has been the subject of wildly positive reviews, with many including it among Nick Cave’s most beautiful compositions. If Ghosteen isn’t Cave’s most beautiful song, it’s certainly his most sublime: the music swells with incredible power and control, at once muted and rapturous, echoing the thematic contradiction of the album. 

The song’s brief crescendo, which unites a heavenly string section with the sounds of psychedelic rock and gospel, is perfectly placed to uplift an otherwise melancholy musing on love, loss and heartache. The hum of synths and strings underneath Cave’s deep, honeyed vocals, which seem to only get better with age, create an atmosphere that is nothing short of devastating in both the considerable measures of sadness and beauty within it. 

Skeleton Tree, released after the death of Nick Cave’s son Arthur in 2015, was inevitably viewed as an album shaped by grief, despite the fact that most of the album was written beforehand. If anything, Ghosteen seems the album that is more concerned with loss and grief: listening to it feels distinctly cathartic. The song captures all the nuance of loss with heartbreaking accuracy, in both lyrics and instrumentation. 

It’s as though all of Cave’s most musically and lyrically poetic works have been building up to this moment: the songs of No More Shall We Part, the Boatman’s Call and Abattoir Blues/ The Lyre of Orpheus, as well as his soundtrack for The Assasination of Jesse James and his second novel. All, though incredible works in their own right, are the predecessors of Ghosteen: a wondrous hymn for grief, loss and beauty.