Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree

​

It is one thing that Nick Cave has been recognized as one of the greatest songwriters of the past three decades, but it’s quite another that over the course of his chronological discography, he has never failed to engage, to entice, to excite, to enthral.  The lumbering, lamenting musical backdrops enable Cave to tell his brooding tales of joy, sadness, death, hope, promise, happiness, the past, the future, so succinctly.  The second track on the LP, “Rings of Saturn,” immediately brings to mind his effortless means of preaching in the third person.  It’s but one method of storytelling that fans of Nick Cave’s work have come to expect with each new release.  “Her eyes that look at me through a rainy hair.”  Presented here, that reads like a non-sequitur, but spoken in the midst of the track’s length, it’s an apt representation of how Cave’s tales are told; how he watches the world spin on its axis, viewing the circle of life seemingly at the speed of light.