Ghosteen

I knew nothing of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds before this album and I would say this is definitely not a way to start. I saw from the wiki write up on this album that it was written and performed after the detah of his son and it definitely shows. This album is dark and depressing and there isn't really anyway around that given the background. For me it was rough to get through this one with the length and content. At the end of it, I was torn on how to rate it and decided to stick with 2 stars as it is a very rough album overall.

If you want to listen to the sound of someone trying to come to terms with the death of a child, then this is the album for you. He manages it beautifully, capturing grief in the loss of coherant words and just plain struggling to articulate the depths of despair he would have been feeling. All well and good, but the big problem is do I want to wallow in empathy of Mr Cave's snapshot in time, especially as he is not known for uplifting jollity at the best of times? Not particularly, as we all have shit going on in our lives, I wish I could be an artist like him and tell the world how it is, but I do not have those skills. I have a feeling I will not listen to this again, once is more than enough. But it is a terrific achievement in laying bare one's depression. Bravo for the balls to make this.

And with that, I am officially through each of the Nick Cave albums on this list. Pretty fitting to get the newest one I guess. The inspiration for this album's content is admittedly quite dark and somber. I don't need to get into that, but it certainly explains the bleak lyrics and sound that make up a majority of the album. I guess critics are a sucker for this sort of stuff, simply based on the contemporary reviews. I get it too, this isn't supposed to be easy to listen to. For the first time whilst listening to a Nick Cave project, I hear the conviction and emotion coming from his voice. This is a man grieving and trying to make sense of life's fragility. It is a bit exhausting though, I hate to say. Listening to an album of this mood for an hour plus will do that to you.

This is a cool, atmospheric album. You can hear the grief in it but also the hope. Beautiful.

Why is this on the list. What a load of rubbish. The backing singers were my favourite part.

Well, this is definitely my favorite Nick Cave album so far but it's still only getting two stars. I just do not understand the hype. Is it awful that his young son died and that's what caused him to write this album? Absolutely. But you know what else is awful? In general, Nick Cave's music.

That's just awful.

There may be a day where this album resonates with me. Today is not that day!

serene and evangelical

Three Nick Cave albums in nine days after nothing through the first 478. Nothing like Henry's Dream or Murder Ballads but really fucking good in a completely new way. It took me a few songs to feel it out but these haunting, glitchy soundscapes suit his voice well. Following up the 12 minute title track with a 14 minute closer seems ridiculous at first but "Hollywood" was maybe the best song on the whole damn thing. Thought I'd be tired of so much of him in a short span but I've been impressed every time.

Otroligt soft musik men riktigt skön. Passar perfekt en mulen söndagsmorgon.

If Brian Eno, Broadway, and sad lyrics were put into a blender. 2 out of 5.

I love early Nick Cave albums, but this loses that grit, grunge and goth edge that makes it stand out. Is that a bad thing? No, it turns out, after an initial concern the album grows into something at times poignant and heartbreaking. Given the context, it's actual quite hard to listen to, it stirs emotions that most artists could only dream of. Grief is a powerful catalyst and remarkable in its impact when curated well. Did it need to be a double album though? Could a few less songs made it all the more impactful?

Heavy stuff, listening to a father's grief being worked through in real time. It's sad, it's beautiful, it's a stellar piece of art, but I am predicting that it's not one I will come back to very often due to the above themes. But very glad to have heard it at least this one time.

Just bad.

When you know that story of where this music came from it moves me to tears. Nick laid his heart out for all of us to see with every song.

I’m disappointed in myself for having missed this album. I love Nick Cave and this just wasn’t on my radar. A really great album. I wish I had a little more time with it before weighing in. But I will definitely keep listening.

This is a really heavy album. It's a full on articulation of grief, and a very moving one.

I liked this record but not my favorite from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. Also, this would not be played regularly by me on my turntable or my streaming feed. Just an average score for me.

Good album and glad nick is still doing alright

NA toto album musí být doopravdy nálada. Není to jen tak jako kulisa.

Very delicate and very dark - which is no surprise considering the circumstances surrounding the writing of this album. Real songwriting and musical craft on display here, and despite the fact this wouldn't typically be the type of album I'd reach for, I have to recognise the quality.

I didn't care for this, but could understand how someone else might.

I almost just didn’t listen to this album. I already think Nick Cave is a snorefest, and now I have to listen to an updated version of his music? Why? I couldn’t make it all the way through. I stopped on disc 2.

Love Nick Cave but always had a tough time getting into this one. It’s great but you really need to be in the mood. Someday I’ll probably eat these words. Most of his albums are growers…

Need a re-listen... rating might go up

Nick Cave carefully wrapped his exquisitely mournful work in an image by Tom duBois, helped by Hingston Studio. As others have said before, this is art made with voice and music.

A sparse, poetic and heartbreaking expression of a father's grief is not what I expected for my drive into work on a Wednesday morning. But I can understand why it is considered one of the best albums of the 2010s, an era marked by its dearth of truly emotional, personal works. I don’t think Ghosteen is something that I liked or will revisit, but I’m glad to have experienced it once. 3⭐️

Nick Cave is pretty good overall but I wasn’t feeling this nut ass concept album too much

Another Nick Cave album. Is this the fourth, or the fifth? I don't know, and I can't distinguish them. This is the one with ethereal wispy mournfulness, as opposed to the black-toned, goth shouty mournfulness. I need a break.

Haven't listened to this, I've got al the mourning I need.

I was so ready to smash tf out of 1*, but then read the wiki and learned about how it's a grief album for his deceased son, and I get it now. It's not something I'd even listen to again, but I can appreciate the beauty behind it.

Wrong again, book. Let me guess, this came out around the same time as an updated edition? There are plenty of better AND worse Nick Cave albums here.

Instrumentally this was eerie and haunting and somewhat beautiful , but man the lyrics and tempo was a drag and hard to follow along. Maybe I have to give this a second listen.

Meh

hm too much yapping singy songy and not actually singing - mid

Heavy, depressing, and when you read about it, you'll understand why. Generally pretty and tragic, just not something I'll want to listen to again any time soon.

Overall, not my tempo. I hated the first track, "Spinning Song," because it was weird. I'd describe the genre as high vibration, mystic, spoken word -- something that I'd listen to at a weird yoga studio or stumble onto via a YouTube video called something like "high concentration, high vibration study music." But, in my quest to define what I had heard, I learned that this album was created after the loss of the singer's son. I have a newfound appreciation of what it is, but still don't "get" it. So, I respect it, but if I was ever listening to it and someone said, "yo, what are you listening to?" I'd lie and say that I was listening to something less embarassing.

Well. It's better than the last Nick Cave album I listened to.

Poetic, spoken word but not very musical. Interesting listen

Good but I prefer his livelier stuff

Different from his other albums and a definite vibe and need to be in the mood for etc

Really liked this, a hauntingly beautiful record. Music doesn’t always need to be uplifting but if it isn’t then it needs to be done well and be listenable and I thought this was just that. Probably my favourite NC&TBS album on here so far.

His haunting vocals take the lead here and is very powerful. An enjoyable listen with some great songs.

Sorry Nick, I’m out on this one. Every album, of which we’ve already had too many on this list, where you sack the band off and use synth are pretty excruciating. Just sounds like a film score (using roughly the same backing on each track) with your not particularly tuneful talk singing therefore even more elevated. Ugh.

- Boycotting this Zio. - The album has a melancholic, soundscapey vibe, and despite the music being ambient and the lyrics more like poems, it feels really full. - That said, I really feel it would benefit from more variation and better melodies. - There are nice ambient moments, but nothing that really makes me want to listen to the album again. It's more of a concept album and kind of plods on, especially once you get about half way through and then still have to slog through those two really long songs near and at the end... - As for the lyrics, I didn't really get pulled in, though there are definitely beautiful moments. - Maybe I wasn't really in the mood?

I enjoyed the ethereal mood setting, but it was easy to get lost and forget you were listening

couldn't get with it

No. 433/1001 Spinning Song 4/5 Bright Horses 4/5 Waiting for You 4/5 Night Raid 3/5 Sun Forest 4/5 Galleon Ship 3/5 Ghosteen Speaks 3/5 Leviathan 3/5 Ghosteen 4/5 (3x) Fireflies 3/5 Hollywood 3/5 (3x) Average: 3,47 Really enjoyed listening to this album. Great sound atmospheres. I especially liked the titular track.

Very different than the first NC and Bad Seeds...ethereal, environmental, slow.

2 - TERRIBLE

I don't know that I really got this -- it was certainly hard to process while driving with my kid to a family event in the burbs. But I felt the gravity and grief and vulnerability, wch were powerful and compelling even if the music was unconventional.

Ghosteen is still revealing itself to me, and it's not the easiest listen, so I don't engage with it as much as it deserves, but I want to use this space to recommend the book, "Faith, Hope and Carnage," which captures a conversation between Nick Cave and Seán O'Hagan and is the most profound treatise about the intersection of faith and art that I've encountered.

Dang, this was emotional. This is like watching The Passion of Christ. You only need to watch/listen to it once for it to stick with you. Beautiful music, but you gotta be in the right mood.

Musically I really enjoyed it, but didn’t care for some of the religious lyrics. I see it’s about the death of his son, so lots of grief here.

Honestly the first Nick Cave album I've actually enjoyed. I wish there were a bit more variance with it being so long.

Despite the critical acclaim, this did not work for me.

I don't enjoy this style of music. The album was depressing as well. Not a good listen.

I didn't pay much attention to the lyrics in my first few times listening, and it wasn't until I went to read about the album that I realized the weight of it. The emotion is there, and I'm certainly not going to say this is a bad album by any means. It isn't. But whatever it did for him, or for the people singing the album's praises, it passed by me. My favorite song is Waiting For You, which tugged at me more than the rest.

This is wonderful

Veldig mørk, fryktelig fin, i overkant lang og svært tung.

If you just listen to the albums on this list without reading into the background or if you are not in a life situation where this resonates, I can understand why this would not be viewed positively. However, it is a brave reflection on loss, told through metaphor and abstract imagery. The use of synths and lack of percussion help create a beautiful canvas for Cave to paint his pictures on. I think the mood you have to be in to want to listen to it is the precise opposite of the mood you should be in when listening to it. I think being forced to listen to it when not in this mood benefitted as I could appreciate it on a level beyond the emotional.

I’d listened to this on release and thought it was decent enough but hadn’t listened to it again until yesterday. I’m not sure if it’s having grown with age, or having had kids since but this hit so much harder than it did on first listen. The sparse instrumentation (particularly percussion) which borders on classic ambient albums really draws the ear to the content of the lyrics and delivery of it and you can really hear the sensemaking being attempted to understand the grief Cave must have been experiencing at the time. It’s a hard listen at times but, as I’m sure many would make pains to point out, that sometimes suffering produces incredible art and this is a great example of it. As with Mount Erie’s ‘A Crow Looked At Me’, I’m going to put this on the pile of an incredible listen, but don’t touch lightly.

I quite enjoyed the ethereal nature of this for the first half an hour, but what the actual hell were those last three tracks? Dragged on so badly for the final 30 minutes.

I wish the weather was worse when I was listening to this! Beautiful, haunting, moody and immaculately produced, will definitely give it another spin the next time I have a long train journey on a rainy day

Another Nick Cave album, this one is quite recent (2019). Listening to it I get a little Leonard Cohen vibe. There’s too much talking for me. The entire album is ethereal.

Hello DEPRESSION, I guess. On the side of whimsy: very appealing album cover, and the -een suffix makes me think of pusheen, the cute little internet cat. (Both '-een's are from the Irish diminuiative suffix -ín, if you were wondering) Otherwise, whew. Bit of a downer. Kind of like one really long, sad song, which I guess means it's a very cohesive album, but for the non-weepers out there, it's probably boring. It's giving a little bit "Bruce Springsteen does Leonard Cohen" (complimentary, I think). Crazy low back vowel on "pastures" and "past". Lowlight: He rhymes "hand" with "hand" one time.

I usually try to listen to the album before I read anything about it. I read some of the reviews on here ahead of time and immediately got the context that it is about his teenage son that died. As a father to a young boy that is an incomprehensible amount of grief. I can't say anything objective about this album anymore but I liked this one more than the other 3 I've heard so far on this list. All of the try-hard macabre poetry and sweeney todd hootenanny instrumentation is gone and it's more sparse with synthesizers. The vocals are better too. I wish that hadn't happened to his son.

Album is full of profound sadness. I need a break from sadness right now, so I can’t really rate it fairly. Musically it’s slow pace and somber. Vocals are more spoken rather than sung. I’ll give it 3 stars for now. I hope the next Nick Cave album is happier.

#246/1001 🇦🇺🇬🇧 I'm listening to this at 5am in bed on my headphones. My dad died 2 days ago and this is the first music with lyrics that i have listened to since then, needless to say the emotions are flowing. This is one of the rarest of records, its bleak, its sparce and its stunningly beautiful. I understand that it simply won't be loved by everyone. I can't imagine what it must sound like to someone who isnt familiar with Nick. I remember listening to the live stream on youtube pre release and it blew me away straight away, Bright Horses in particular. Best Tracks: Bright Horses, Ghosteen, Waiting for You, Sun Forest.

I didn’t think spoken word was really a thing in 2019.

I wouldn't want to listen to this frequently but I sorta enjoyed it. Sad and ethereal but pretty interesting.

Fucking hell another Nick Cave album. Gag me with a spoon.

Tragisch, mooi, doet me denken aan Black Star van Bowie. Moeilijk luisterbaar

Not really sure what to make of this. I can hear why this would be someone’s favorite album but I can’t see it for me.

I hate this.

From the global tragic to the personal. When Ghosteen first came out, I wasn't ready to give it the time of day. When I relistened last year? That was a different story. The name really fits it, with a vibe that is a little bit gossamer and a little bit haunted (as an album dedicated to a dead child should do). There's just an ethereal sadness to it. It probably helps that I think Elder Cave is like a fine wine. Or more, Early Cave can be like a too young wine… often harsh and unpalatable though it can be fresh and unexpected (pretty sure more to come here). I expect Ellis has something to do with this. He's pretty clearly the texture man, he's responsible for so much of the soaring and beautiful bits of the album (that eerie yet stunning chorale on Bright Horses, for example). Cave himself is writing philosophy and histories of a dark wonderous place, and it serves his trembling deep voice as well (or better I might argue) than all the pulp and murder and such from the albums he made his bread and butter on. It's nice to see artists age and mature and not really change so much as understand who they are now is not who they were 40 years ago. The loss on this album certainly could be part of it too, but it didnt really change Clapton for the better, so it's probably more about Cave. The oratory vibe of Cave's singing style surely isn't for everyone, though there's a certain poetry that I find it hard to not see how someone wouldn't embrace bits of this, there's that timbre to his voice. Is this the greatest album he's released? Debatable, too. But it was rightly praised to high heavens when it came out. It's just that sometimes the beauty and the torture of grief isn't the sort of thing you want yourself to be immersed in. I think I might have to concede a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ here.

Absolutely haunting and beautiful and heartbreaking.

Slow and dreamy, hard to pay attention to, not really my thing

This is really beautiful but holy fucking shit it’s sad

I honestly think this is on the list for to recency bias.

A hard record to listen to and it shouldn't be on this list, frankly. We don't need to highlight Mr Caves grief.

Interesting music for meditation; Spoken vocals failing to pass even close to what passes for singing. A shame that.

This album is like an Impressionist painting in musical form. Haunting, beautiful album born out of terrible grief. I do love Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds but generally lean towards their earlier material or the more recent Wild God album. Having said that, I listened to Ghosteen this morning and then listened to the trilogy of Push the Sky Away, Skeleton Tree, and Ghosteen (again!) There aren't too many artists where I'd do that and happily listen to one artist all day. 5 stars.

Decent album, some good lyricism but some songs dragged on pretty long and kinda put me to sleep. Favorites: Galleon Ship, Ghosteen

Only 10 more albums to go, so this will be the last time I have to listen to Nick Cave.

Oooooof. Atmospheric bummer. Neat in a way but I did not enjoy it. 2 or 3? Let's go 2?

1 more Nick Cave after this! Like singing to the startup sounds of the 80s. It's very Nick Cave to go from post-punk to ambient, I feel like there's a few degrees of separation there. But also like most of Nick's albums, personally I find it to be self-indulgent and too long. The ambient tracks by themselves are alright, especially "Galleon Ship", which feels Midnights-adjacent to me.

Ethereal, kind of aquatic, with nicks low register droney-ness. Actually liked it more then expected

I feel for the guy, but this wasn't for me.

Enough with the Nick Cave

Instead of giving you a review on yet another average Nick Cave album, here’s a list of notable artists who have less albums on this list than he does (a whopping FIVE): Stevie Wonder Prince Miles Davis Pink Floyd Radiohead R.E.M Metallica Black Sabbath The Cure Madonna Marvin Gaye Kate Bush Joni Mitchell Fiona Apple And COUNTLESS others. What was the author of this book on??

It's a great one, and come to think of it, this is actually my favorite Nick Cave era. I'm not sure the second side was needed muscially or narratively, but hey, I do like a challenging bit of long form music. The first side is what gets the repeat listens though.

I don't know. Heard about them a lot but it's so dreary.

Listening to Nick Cave makes me want to jump out of a window. I do not get this list creator’s fascination with him. I really hope this is the last album of his I ever have to listen to.

"His son died and that's the main inspiration!" Like I give a shit. 2/5

Classy.

7/10

I really vividly remember when this came out, and to this day, I have a sort of connection to this album. I will admit, that there are a couple songs on the first disc of this thing that I'm not that into, but the full album is still such a tender portrait of loss and grief. There are lots of pretty, and really emotionally heavy songs here, and the second disc, is pretty much flawless; Hollywood is one of my favorite songs ever. Ghosteen just occupies such a unique place in my life. I can't really articulate it now, but it's just remarkable. Unfortunately, I don't think it's a 5, but it is a special album.

A fan, but is kind of samey all throughout. If this was a tight 8 song album, I think I would've preferred the shorter length. Favorite tracks: Waiting For You ; Ghosteen