Thereโs a revealing scene in 20,000 Days On Earth, the fictionalised account of a day in Nick Caveโs life, where the singer meets his chief collaborator Warren Ellis for lunch. Over eels and pasta, the two musicians share a fruity anecdote about Nina Simone (punch line: โchampagne, cocaine and sausagesโ) that underscores the idea of performance as a transformative experience; one of the many threads running through Iain Pollard and Jane Forsythโs exceptional work.
Andrew Dominikโs new film, One More Time With Feeling, finds Cave similarly interrogating the creative process โ though it comes freighted with unimaginably heavy baggage: the death of Caveโs 15 year old son, Arthur, in July 2015, midway through recording the latest Bad Seeds studio album, Skeleton Tree. Cutting between Cave finishing recording the album at La Frette Studios, France during Autumn 2015, performing it at Londonโs Air studios with the Bad Seeds and a series of interviews with the filmmaker, One More Time With Feeling reveals a family coming to terms with their loss and a group of musicians who are trying to plot a course through a difficult emotional time with honesty and dignity. If 20,000 Days On Earth was an exercise in blurring truth and fiction, One More Time With Feeling finds Cave very much laid bare. โWe all wish we had something to write about,โ he tells Dominik. โBut all that trauma and the way this happened, it was extremely damaging for the creative process.โ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svru1jNLIK8
There is plenty of this kind of pontificating and self-scrutiny as Cave attempts to make sense of his tragedy within the context of his art. Is that even possible, he wonders? His earlier narrative songs, he explains, โheld my life together at a point.โ Now, he continues, โI donโt believe that life is like that. A pleasing resolve.โ He expresses self-doubt โ โYou decay and you diminish. The struggle to do what I do becomes harderโ โ and finds rueful black humour in the physical toll of his sonโs death. โI look like a battered monument.โ Elsewhere, he discusses the prophetic nature of songwriting, the elasticity of time and a fear of words; but often these ideas go nowhere or he later discounts them. You sense Cave is exploring the depth and breadth of his feelings as he goes along. He tells of crying in his friendโs arms in the street, only to realise it was a stranger, and the โkind looksโ he gets in the queue at his local bakers. He asks rhetorically, โWhen did you become an object of pity?โ
Cave is not alone in his struggle, of course. His wife, Susie Bick, becomes an increasingly significant presence as the film progresses. In one heart-breaking scene, she shows Dominik a picture Arthur painted, when he was five, of a local windmill; coincidentally, it is near the site where he died last year. Arthurโs surviving twin, Earl, also appears; a normal teenage boy, it seems. But thereโs a moment when the camera catches him reflexively stroking the back of his motherโs hair โ an intimate, protective gesture.
Cave and Dominik have form together. Cave wrote the score for and appeared in Dominikโs Western, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford; Cave invited Dominik to film One More Time With Feeling. In a directorโs statement, Dominik outlines Caveโs thoughts going into the film: โNick told me that he had some things he needed to say, but he didnโt know who to say them to. The idea of a traditional interview, he said, was simply unfeasible but that he felt a need to let the people who cared about his music understand the basic state of things. It seemed to me that he was trapped somewhere and just needed to do something โ anything โ to at least give the impression of forward movement.โ
The friendship between the two men allows for some levity to enter the proceedings. At the start, there is some relaxed back and forth about what shirt Cave should wear to the studio and Caveโs dryly disparaging views on Dominikโs โridiculous 3D black and white cameraโ. Later, Cave and Ellis discuss the lustrous quality of Caveโs hair. โIs my hair all right?โ โNever looked better. Proceed with confidence.โ Ellis is a critical part of the film and the early part of the film follows him and Cave during the recording and editing process for Skeleton Tree, as they discuss comparatively mundane things like re-recording a vocal that didnโt quite work. Gradually, Ellisโ role changes becomes less clearly defined, but evidently his work behind the scenes โ literally, metaphorically, spritually โ is invaluable. โWhat would I do without him?โ Cave muses. โHe is holding everything together.โ
There is, of course, music in Dominikโs film. While at Air Studios, Cave sits at his piano in the centre of the room with Ellis opposite him; the rest of the Bad Seeds stepping into view when their particular skills are required. Itโs largely a two-man show โ Cave at his piano, while Ellis provides support with violin and an array of sonic effects. The songs are pillowed by vaporous electronic backing โ in the film, you frequently see Ellis rocking back and forth, hunched over his MicroKorg keyboard โ that recall the slow-moving, aquatic drift of Push The Sky Away and the textural explorations of Cave and Ellisโ deceptively simple and stripped-down soundtracks. Here, Ellisโ violin and keyboard wreath the songs like mist, imbuing them with a soft, mournful ambience.
The tone is set by โJesus Aloneโ, where Cave sing-speaks over a backing of spectral analogue washes and electronic whistling. โYou fell from the sky / Crash-landed in a field near the River Adurโ begins Cave and this seems as close as the album gets to specifically addressing his sonโs death. Even at its most abstract โ โa ghost song lodged in the throat of a mermaidโ โ the song is steeped in anguish and pain. โWith my voice, I am calling youโ Cave repeats in the chorus. โGirl In Amberโ finds Cave, accompanied by a simple cycling piano refrain and a discreet string motif, continuing to explore his grief: โI used to think that when you died you kind of wandered the world in a slumber till you crumbled, were absorbed into the earth, but I donโt think that any moreโ. โMagnetoโ, meanwhile, is framed only by a few piano notes, a strange hiss like a detuned radio set and the occasional strum of an acoustic guitar. A depiction of the effects of trauma, โIn the bathroom mirror, I see me vomit in the sinkโ, it contains one of the albumโs best lines โ simultaneously funny and dark โ โI had such hard blues down there in the supermarket queuesโ. All the same, the atmosphere is so spare and intimate, you feel like youโre curled up deep inside Caveโs piano.
โAnthroceneโ continues to address head-on concepts of loss (โAll of the things we love, we love, we love, we loseโ) while the song itself โ loose-limbed, skittish โ spins around him. In Dominikโs film, we see Thomas Wydler almost levitate off his stool as he moves fluidly round his drum kit delivering susurrating flourishes of percussion; Jim Sclavunos, meanwhile, adds subtle xylophone flourishes. At one point, Cave explains to Dominik that the naked nature of the songs are reflective of the emotions Cave and his band are attempting to process. It is evident on โI Need Youโ, which appears to be a direct appeal to Bick. Over a sighed chorus from the Bad Seeds, and swelling and subsiding MiniKorg lines, Cave sings, โJust breathe, just breathe, I need youโ.
There is something unexpectedly yearning โ and deeply moving โ about โDistant Skyโ, as Ellisโ violin swells and rises to meet Else Torpโs uplifting soprano contribution. โLet us go now my only companion, set out for the distant sky, soon the children will be rising, will be rising, this is not for our eyesโ. The album closes with the title song, buoyed along on a gently lilting piano melody and slow acoustic strum, it has the same sense of space as โBrompton Oratoryโ โ arguably, The Boatmanโs Call is possibly the most appropriate point of comparison for Skeleton Tree. Another deeply personal album, with the singer addressing love and pain in a similarly open-hearted fashion and in which the Bad Seeds were required to rethink their requirements. โSkeleton Treeโ, at last, finds a sliver of hope at the albumโs end: โAnd itโs alright nowโ, he sighs, although to whom this reassuring sentiment is directed isnโt clear.
Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner
Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.