NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS Ghosteen (Kobalt) It’s true of the petty and ordinary just as it is true of something great, which Ghosteen undeniably is, that timing and context matter. As much and sometimes more so than meaning. Or we use them to give meaning at the very least. Nick Cave & The Bad Seed’s 2016 album, Skeleton Tree, was not “about” the death of Nick Cave’s son, Arthur, though it emerged in the months after that devastating event. As Cave would explain — though not

Today the new Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds album, Ghosteen, is reviewed on this page. It is an album whose emotional landscape and musical explorations can best be understood by knowing not just his personal history but the context in which this music appears. Vital in that is the 2016 album Skeleton Tree. NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS Skeleton Tree (Kobalt) Searching for one, wrapping-it-all-up, telling-us-exactly-how-he-feels meaning in this album, the first released by Nick Cave