ndwolfwood3769 Review of One More Time with Feeling

One More Time with Feeling (2016)

Very personal account of the recording of Skeleton Tree in the wake of an extremely tragic event.

[10/10 · 9 November 2021]

This documentary focuses on the recording of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds' album Skeleton Tree. While recording the album Nick Cave and his family suffered a devastating tragedy with an accident that lead to the loss of their fifteen year old son Arthur. Before Arthur's death Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds had already written and recorded most of the album Skeleton Tree. After his death they went back to the studio to lay out the final recordings and fix up existing tracks. This documentary tells the story one song at a time while Nick Cave and others give their own insights and struggle to wrap their heads around the tragic loss that has permanently changed his family and himself. Nick has always exhibited a bit of humor and honesty when talking about his previous work or his process. That humor is gone. In fact it's told by Nick in a way that's so desperate and searching for answers or meaning that you can almost feel the loss. Nick talks about the effect it has had on his writing and his life in general. How his work and his process no longer seem important to him. How everything in his life seems so insignificant in the wake of the family's loss. The pain can be seen throughout and heard on the recordings. Being most of this album was completed before his son's death it is not addressed in the writing, but can be heard in Nick's voice throughout. Later Nick Cave would write more about his philosophy and how he is deeply effected in the Bad Seeds album Ghosteen. What we get here is a lot of emotion, anger and genuine pain. Where an event that seems insignificant such as finding an old painting made by Arthur seems to be heartbreaking. Being this was recorded so close to Arthur's death there is a lot of pain during the realization that the world still moves forward despite the tragedy. What reviewers may see as "self indulgent" or "pretentious" is nothing more than a family trying desperately to make sense of a tragedy.