For me, it's hard to not see this album as an elevation for a survivor of sorts. Cave's two sons have died and I can't understand the depths of those sorrows; I've experienced visceral and all-consuming sorrow in different ways, but I feel—and I may very well be wrong about this—that Cave's spiritual sides have grown beyond that of the christian concept of God, into something that I identify as unitarian universalist.

The first half of the album uses Cave's voice as that of a gospel preacher, rhythmically and repetitively, throwing his audience into a trance. The addition of a gospel choir in a few places doesn't hurt.

I dig how the drums sound as though the mics are in the red; strangely, they mellow out into more dynamics as the album rolls on; alto horns and violins pair well with reverby sounds made by synthesizers.

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds have been along for a long time. They know how to pace an album. The voice-and-piano tracks work well, a close gaze into the simple things that just make a song work, a helping hand, a guide, a bit of navigation.

The lyrics are open-ended enough to allow them to feed into the minds of most people, I guess; they're not abrasive as from a young Cave, not half-witted as though messed-up from bad drug use, and they don't point a finger and tell the listener what to do.

As a result, I feel the album is one where the listener is welcomed into a world of possibilities, one that's got many songs that will stand up for repeated listens.

The entire album feels like one of mercy—for joy, to quote Cave in 'Joy'—like many of this band's albums; to me, this is a post-cathartic album, one where the music and lyrics are written by people who have been through a lot and wanted to create a recorded witness of what they've been through, kind of like people at an alcoholics anonymous meeting: there's something for themselves, and something for others, something for us all as a whole, a unity.

Altogether, this is a beautiful album with songs that transcend boring structures and often goes into beauty, be it through melody, preacher-type melodrone chants, wondrous chord progressions, or even prayer.

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Madeleine Bergquist
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Michael Harper