Ghosteen
| Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Ghosteen
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).
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Forty years into his career, Nick Cave emerges with one of his most powerful albums yet, an endlessly giving and complex meditation on mortality and our collective grief.
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Rolling Stone
As he continues to parse the loss of his teenage son, the main Bad Seed has created one of the most moving albums of his career.
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NME
A beautiful account of harrowing grief.
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The New York Times
Eerie, meditative.
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The Guardian
In the first album wholly written since the death of his son, Cave reaches an extraordinary, sad and beautiful artistic evolution.
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Consequence of Sound
A record that blurs life's hard lines and searches for peace, love, and beauty.
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The Quietus
On his new album, Nick Cave conjures a profound and powerful sense of wonder.
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A.V. Club Music
On Ghosteen, Nick Cave invites us into his bright abyss.
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Louder Sound
Nick Cave’s new album Ghosteen is an astonishing work which sees him transform his grief into a poetic masterpiece.
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Crack Magazine
On Ghosteen Cave seems more vital than ever, a master of his craft who has taken the immense nature of grief and channelled it into an album that burns with beauty.
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Hotpress
This is an artist laying himself bare, this is art as bleak as it is beautiful, and one can only hope it offers some sort of catharsis - some modicum of relief - to its creator.
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Under the Radar Mag
It is a record that, given time, may not only prove to be Cave's greatest work but also an unparalleled musical meditation on grief and acceptance.
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Stereogum
Asks something of us, for us to listen and wrangle our own thoughts about existence, and the things we gain and lose along the way.
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Brooklyn Vegan
‘Ghosteen’ finds beauty and hope after darkness.
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Loud and Quiet
The weathered baritone is more powerful than ever, and the most affecting moments on the album see Cave creasing – making itself small – into a tortured falsetto.
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Slant Magazine
The album explores the contradiction between the individual pain of grief and the universality of death.
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Spectrum Culture
One of the most challenging and most beautiful of Cave’s career.
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Uncut
Cave’s journey on Ghosteen – by boat, by ominous train, by car or heavenly staircase – is a grand tour in search of common ground. He is looking for the universal, with or without Jesus.
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The Current
Am I supposed to give him a pass on having cliched lyrics, because he had that terrible loss?
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Pop Matters
The anguish a parent feels for losing their child is harrowing and Ghosteen masterfully captures Nick Cave's grief and spiraling rumination on mortality.
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The Arts Desk
Songs of blazing, redemptive faith follow grief for the torn open Cave.
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The Irish Times
Grief and loss never sounded so beautiful.
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The Courier Online
Ghosteen is without a doubt one of the most beautiful albums I have ever heard and a high point in the career of a man at his lowest.
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Audioxide
I understand completely why the record resonates with certain listeners, and it will surely go down as one of 2019’s most striking moments.
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Audioxide
The group’s a heavy duty outfit for sure, with plenty purring under the hood, but it rarely seems like they’re firing on all cyclinders.
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Audioxide
For fans, this may well be exactly what they want from a Nick Cave album. Technically excellent, Ghosteen far from besmirches their discography, but it’s unfortunately not my cup of tea.
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The Fire Note
There’s a sadness about that fact, as well as a comfort, and Nick Cave’s Ghosteen, plumbs the depth of those deep, undeniable feelings, capturing moments of clarity, beauty and soulfulness amid the brokenness and chaos of daily existence.
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Everything is Noise
Ghosteen by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is by far the most emotionally layered album to be released in a very long time. It is delicate and brutal all at once, and one of the best records of this year.
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Wayland Student Press
“Ghosteen” sees the band pivoting stylistically yet again with stunning results.
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Clash Music
The Prince of Darkness open the shutters to let love in once more.
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Independent
Cave sounds buoyed, not weakened, by exposing his wounds on this astonishing album.
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God Is In the T.V. Zine
It’s a strange, beautifully bewildering record that I’m finding equally bewildering and enchanting.
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DIY Mag
Magnificently composed and emphatically emotive, ‘Ghosteen’ is an unforgettable piece of work.
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Texarcana Gazette
This album will take you somewhere special — a terribly beautiful roughness to, but special nonetheless.
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Stereoboard
‘Ghosteen’ is an album that openly and honestly admits there is no silver lining. No lessons learnt. Nothing. As mentioned, getting into Nick Cave’s work is no picnic.
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Exclaim!
Ghosteen finds comfort in what worldly wonders remain. It surely ranks among Cave and company's most ambitious efforts, and maybe among their most affecting, too.
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Northern Transmissions
It’s an intriguing, somewhat beguiling listen and, surprise or not, an infinitely beautiful, heartbreaking album that only a master can create.
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Backseat Mafia
This album is a masterpiece.
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Gigwise
A meandering journey routed in mystique forms the Bad Seeds’ new album, Ghosteen.
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Paste Magazine
Nick Cave’s Ghosteen Is a Devastating Meditation on Loss and Survival.
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The Scotsman
Ghosteen is overall a more elegant catharsis. As Cave sings in a quavery tenor, “it’s a long way to find peace of mind,” he sounds resigned but not defeated.
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Peanut Butter Pope
On ‘Ghosteen’, Nick Cave reacts to suffering with reflection, religion, and enchantment.
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Independent
Poignant.
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iNews
An extraordinary album brimming with agony, honesty and quiet wonder.
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Financial Times
Synthesiser drones, strings and solemn piano chords form the backdrop of an album poignantly exploring grief.
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All Music
If they never find those answers on Ghosteen, their search is the basis of a brave and extraordinary work from a visionary songwriter.
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Sputnik Music
Classic.
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WUOG Radio
The seventeenth studio album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is a powerful piece on the nuances of loss as heard through the ears of a grieving father.
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No More Workhorse
It won’t be one for every day listening but each listen will pull you in that bit further.
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The Student Playlist
Expressed with profound humanity, ‘Ghosteen’ is the most beautiful music that Nick Cave has ever made.
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The Wee Review
Cave closes the decade with another set of fragile, intimate numbers.
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Phaser Magazine
Death, grief and what comes after – concepts we all pray we never have to deal with.
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Powder Finger Speaks
I apologise to no-one for my opinion that Nick Cave is a creative genius.
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Gig Soup Music
A piece of work that’s difficult but hopeful, full of darkness but supplier of enough light to illuminate its every square inch.
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Americana UK
Modern masterpiece of melancholy that charts Nick Cave’s attempts to deal with the grief borne of his lost son Arthur.
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Stuff
Ghosteen, the triumphant 17th album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is an elegant, elegiac conclusion to what Cave describes as a trilogy.
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Vinyl Chapters
A captivating and elegiac album, Ghosteen is shaped by despair and the sound of a man affirming the glow of love; here, grief and loss render its author vulnerable but not broken.
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The Mic Magazine
Here is an artist tunnelling to the depths of what it means to be human, to be mortal, to suffer. He is at his creative peak and is using it to convey near-universal truths. We may never see his ilk again.
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The Telegraph
This haunting study of grief is not for the faint-hearted.
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Medium
Its not the complete musical “light at the end of the tunnel” that fans of Cave may have been expecting, instead something much more morose, realistic, and human.
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The Needle Drop
By virtue of its moving vocal performances and lyricism, Ghosteen is among Nick Cave's finest statements—even if its sound design often leaves something to be desired.
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4 out of 5 Reviews
The album is full of evocative imagery that stands apart from Cave’s background.
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Standard
Endlessly absorbing.
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Inkey Magazine
I Couldn’t Listen To Anything Else For Days.
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Scene Point Blank
Each song throughout the Ghosteen album is heartbreaking in its own exquisite way.
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The Gryphon
Ghosteen is an enchantingly ethereal and hauntingly poignant double album from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – and their most personal record yet.
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Flood Magazine
Everything might be as distant as the stars. But Nick Cave, on Ghosteen, makes empathy and elegy seem so near and touchable.
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3 Songs & Out
This is, hands down, my album of the year and one of the greatest achievements of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds musical career.
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Classic Rock
If you like Cave as a noisy, rattling sinking place, you will be disappointed. Who wants to take a look into his soul, will have found a new favorite album.
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MSN
The songs are like dreamscapes wrapped in a space blanket of grief and otherness that have brief moments of optimism.
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Belwood Music
A “perfect” human face lacking the flaws that truly make it human.
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The Paris Review
The songs on Ghosteen seem more mercurial, less structured than that. Cloud patterns or unfurling flowers rather than architectural buildings. I like them a lot.
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Amped
Never too morose but always painfully honest, GHOSTEEN’s two halves can be felt long after the album is over.
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The Times
From the deepest grief to fantastical splendour.
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Far Out Magazine
‘Ghosteen’ is a masterpiece of human connection.
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There Stands the Glass
In treasuring the good that remains, he honors the memories of those he’s lost. That’s the best any of us can do.
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The Sun
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ latest album Ghosteen sees the Aussie transform from provocateur to inclusive soul.
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Spiral Earth
So it is an album full of life, the losses, joys, successes and failures that we all experience. The human experience in all its glorious hues.
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Eject Music
Ghosteen is a reflection on death, hope, and faith.
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Fresh Air
Ghosteen is a very heavy and powerful album.
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X-Press Mag
He’s transforming. He’s vibrating. Look at him now.
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Filthy Dreams
I don’t want to say this is an album about healing so much as it is an album about how, while no one is ever truly healed from grief, there is solace in love and solidarity.
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Closed Cap
Ghosteen is Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds At Their Best.
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Belwood Music
A “perfect” human face lacking the flaws that truly make it human.
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The Afterword
I found it boring, this whole soundtrack side career has really taken over. It’s the Cave Ellis show and the Bad Seeds must have been bored senseless.
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Rock NYC
There is a bright light burning right at the center of the album.
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Hot Pop Today
Hauntingly Heartbreaking.
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BBC
He’s a monster… and a god!
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Jasmine Maia
Its radiantly ambient sound is unique to anything The Bad Seeds have ever produced, and vocally, Cave has reached a peak unparalleled by any prior performances.
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