Ghosteen (CD)
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Amoeba Review
07/24/2020
Ghosteen is a work of deep, somber, majestic beauty. It’s hard to find the words to review an album whose mournful, transcendent spirit is so much bigger, more primal than human language. The eminently talented Nick Cave uses his lyrics here, of course, to great effect, whispering meditations on great love and great loss, painting poetic images and recounting parables that get under the skin. Underneath it all, the music breaks and crests like the waves of some interior ocean, keening and anguished, hopeful and transcendent. Yet for all that, it’s not a hard listen; it’s simultaneously searching and comforting, an antidote of sorts for the plagues we all must face as part of the human condition.