Ghosteen is the seventeenth studio album by the Australian rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It was released on 4 October 2019 on Ghosteen Ltd and on 8 November 2019 on Bad Seed Ltd, both the band's own imprints. Ghosteen is a double album—the band's first since Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus (2004)—and the final part of a trilogy of albums that includes Push the Sky Away (2013) and Skeleton Tree (2016).
Produced by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, Ghosteen was written in the aftermath of the death of Cave's son Arthur in 2015. It was recorded primarily in Malibu and West Hollywood, California in the United States, with further sessions in Germany and England. Cave's lyrics are more abstract than his earlier narrative-based writing, and explore themes of loss, death and existentialism, as well as empathy, faith and optimism. Like Skeleton Tree, the album features extensive use of synthesizers, loops and ambient elements, particularly the minimal use of drums and percussion.
Upon its release Ghosteen was met with widespread critical acclaim. It received several perfect scores and is the highest-rated album of 2019 and the 2010s decade (tied with Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly) on Metacritic. The album placed in the top 10 album charts in several countries and was included in several publications' year-end and decade-end lists of best albums. Both European and North American tours in support for Ghosteen were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with all shows rescheduled to later dates in 2021.
Background In July 2015, during the recording sessions for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' sixteenth studio album Skeleton Tree (2016), Nick Caves 15-year-old son Arthur died after falling from the Ovingdean Gap near Brighton, England. Skeleton Tree and the related documentary film One More Time with Feeling were released the following year; Skeleton Trees lyrical themes and its "bleak and disturbing" sound led to misconceptions that the album was entirely about Arthur's death. The majority of the songs on the album, however, were written prior to his death, with Cave only improvising and amending subsequent lyrics during the album's final sessions.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds returned to live performances in January 2017 and four months later released the compilation album Lovely Creatures: The Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (2017), which was originally due for release in 2015. In April 2018, Cave began a series of initially limited question-and-answer events called Conversations with Nick Cave, in which he explored the relationship with his audience; Cave's efforts in engaging directly with his fans continued in September 2018 when he began a blog, The Red Hand Files, with a similar concept where fans send in questions. In the same month, Cave's longtime keyboardist Conway Savage—a member of the band since 1990—died of a brain tumor about a year after his diagnosis Ghosteen was ultimately dedicated to Savage; however, Nick Cave discussed that the title of the album and lyrical imagery used is based on metaphysical conversations with Arthur. In the weeks after his death, the band released the extended play Distant Sky: Live in Copenhagen (2018) and premiered a full-length concert film of the same name.
Recording
Ghosteen was recorded in various locations in the United States, England and Germany between early 2018 and early 2019, with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis heading production. Initial "improv" sessions began at Retreat Studios in Brighton, England in spring 2018, with a minimal setup of Cave on piano and Ellis on a Yamaha Reface DX synthesizer "sketch[ing] out pieces of music" together; the sessions lasted approximately a week.
Ellis selected 20 tracks from the Retreat sessions to continue recording at Woodshed Recording Studios in Malibu and NightBird Recording Studios in West Hollywood, California in the US some months later. The Woodshed sessions—during which most of the album was recorded— were held in a single room "surrounded by an Eden-like garden." Cave and Ellis lodged in the house attached to Woodshed for the duration of the sessions, which was subsequently destroyed by the 2019 California wildfires.
Further sessions were held at Candy Bomber Studio in Berlin, Germany and at Air Studios in London, England. The Air sessions featured the recording of a string ensemble with orchestrator Ben Foster. By January 2019, Cave said he and the Bad Seeds had "nearly finished a new record". Ghosteen was subsequently mixed by Cave, Ellis, Lance Powell and Andrew Dominik at Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California and mastered by Chris Gehringer.
Warren Ellis described the album's recording sessions as having a "spiritual" quality to them, noting: "[The Ghosteen recording process] was seemingly otherworldly. The ten days we did in Malibu were like... they were some of the happiest days I've ever lived on this earth. They were days filled with continual wonder and disbelief at what was coming out. It felt like someone, or something, wanted us to make it. It was a truly spiritual experience."
Composition Ghosteen is a double album—Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' first since Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus (2004)—and contains 11 tracks. The first part of the album features eight songs, which Nick Cave describes as "the children"; the second part of the album contains two longer songs and a spoken-word track, which he describes as "their parents". In summarising Ghosteen, Cave referred to the album both as "a migrating spirit" and the final part of a trilogy of albums the band began with Push the Sky Away (2013), which also includes Skeleton Tree.
Lyrics Cave began writing lyrics for the songs on Ghosteen in February 2017, when a series of images he visualised while in Oslo, Norway became the basis for a later verse in the song "Hollywood". According to Cave, "within this sudden vision the whole of the album presented itself". Cave, who had "very deliberately" not written since the end of 2015 when amending the lyrics for Skeleton Tree, attributed a "new sort of lyrical confidence" to a subsequent process of "enforced shutdown", where he would "confine [him]self to barracks for a while". The album's lyrics were written at Cave's home in Brighton, a change from his usual "disciplined" routine of writing lyrics in a private office. The change in environment and routine led to Cave "amassing a stockpile of lines and thoughts, images and ideas" instead of writing songs in a more traditional manner.
As with the lyrics on Skeleton Tree, Cave abandoned the narrative-based approach he was known for, as he believed it to be "restrictive". Explaining his new approach to writing, Cave said: "The idea that we live life in a straight line, like a story, seems to me to be increasingly absurd and, more than anything, a kind of intellectual convenience … There is a pure heart, but all around it is chaos." In the first-ever issue of The Red Hand Files, Cave elaborated that he found an authentic "way to write beyond the trauma … that deals with all manner of issues but does not turn its back on the issue of the death of my child". He said this new-found method allowed him to write "beyond the personal into a state of wonder. In doing so the colour came back to things with a renewed intensity and the world seemed clear and bright and new."
Several publications described Ghosteens lyrics as dealing with themes of loss, death, grief, and existentialism, but also noted positive themes such as empathy, faith and optimism. Several lyrical motifs and phrases are repeated and referenced throughout different songs, as well as recurring imagery of nature, the elements and Christianity. In addition to Cave's Christian imagery, the lyrics for the closing track "Hollywood" reference the story of Kisa Gotami, a Buddhist arhat who seeks help from the Buddha after the death of her child and discovers that "no one is untouched by loss." Cave himself later commented on the inclusion of the Kisa story, saying it "had been of great significance and comfort to me for years and at some point I jotted it down in verse form, completely independent of anything else, and with no intention of it being a song."
Music Described by Pitchfork as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' "most musically esoteric record", Ghosteen is an ambient, ambient pop and electronic music album. Like Skeleton Tree, it features extensive use of analogue synthesizers, sparse piano, choral harmonies and drones. Orchestral strings are also a prominent feature of the album; the strings were arranged by conductor Ben Foster, with assistance from Sam Thompson. A five-piece string ensemble—featuring two violins, viola, cello and double bass—are featured in addition to Warren Ellis' violin. Other instrumentation on the album includes several woodwinds, gamelan chimes, an ondes Martenot and tablas.
Several critics emphasised Ghosteens infrequent use of Thomas Wydlers drums and Jim Sclavunos percussion in contrast to the band's previous albums. Wydler had recorded drum tracks for several songs, but Cave felt "the drums anchored the songs to the ground and didn't allow them to float". Most of Wydler's tracks were subsequently removed from the final mix, a decision that Cave said was "not made lightly or on a whim, rather it was a tough artistic decision determined by the needs of the songs themselves."
All of the music on Ghosteen was composed together by Cave and Ellis. Describing their writing process as "something chemical", Andrew Dominik—who co-mixed the album and who was present at the Woodshed sessions in 2018—said that "Nick is more into formal ideas of structure and whether or not a piece of music sounds good. Warren doesn't give a fuck about anything except how a piece of music feels. Nick doesn't really let his control go, but working with somebody like Warren allows him to move … They react to each other." "Hollywood" was based around a loop and "circular synth chords" that were originally composed by Ellis, which Cave further improvised on top of. The original "Hollywood" jam was significantly longer and only the final 15 minutes were edited for use as the album version, as Cave considered the track mostly "unusable" apart from the final "mysterious and compelling" section.
Cave—usually known for his "stiff baritone"— sings on several tracks in a falsetto vocal register, which has been noted for its "quavering, trembling" and "tremulous" quality.
Packaging Ghosteens title is a combination of the word "ghost" and the Irish-language suffix "ín" (anglicised as "een"), which translates to English as "little", "small" or "benevolent". Cave took the title from a book about Irish tinkers, in which the author believes his crying child has been possessed by a ghost. However, the title has often been misinterpreted as a portmanteau of "ghost" and "teen".
Ghosteens sleeve was designed by Cave and Hingston Studio, an independent creative agency based in London which had designed several previous Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' releases. The album's front cover art features an edited version of The Breath of Life, a 2001 painting by the artist Tom duBois from his Eden series. It depicts the biblical Garden of Eden, with various wildlife and colourful scenery. Creative Reviews Rachael Steven commented that "in an era of … record sleeves with dark and dystopian themes, the image stands out for its radiant optimism", while The Observers Kitty Empire described the artwork as a "kitsch paradise" that signified "a radical change of emotional landscape" for the band. The album's inner sleeve features photographs of Cave and Warren Ellis shot by Matthew Thorne.
Release