Cave’s voice shares the love

Ghosteen, the triumphant 17th album from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds is an elegant, elegiac conclusion to what Cave describes as a trilogy. Goodness, what a journey it’s been.

It began with 2013’s Push The Sky Away, which probably rates in my top 10 albums of the decade, so you have to take my review with that in mind. I have allowed that album to lift me to the heavens more times than I can count.

The Skeleton Tree followed in the same musical landscape, but was utterly more devastating and difficult to experience. It was permeated with the tragic death in 2015 of Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur, which happened during the recording process.

Where Push the Sky Away reached for the stars, Skeleton dug up graves.

Listeners peeled away semi-improvised lyrics to separate fact and fable, which Cave has always excelled in merging. There are films about the making of both albums which are not only works of art in their own right, but serve to deepen the respect and dignity he deserves.

I’m still digesting Ghosteen, but the central theme is love. Spinning Song opens the album: ‘‘I love you. Peace will come in time. Time will come for us.’’ Leviathan closes the first side: ‘‘I love my baby and my baby loves me.’’

Cave’s voice is the central instrument, The Bad Seeds swirling around him with minimal fuss but maximum attentiveness.

They’re the first lyrics he’s formally written since Arthur’s death (Cave has a very formal system for writing lyrics), and they reflect a man who continues to look grief and love squarely in the eye. They are two sides of the same coin. A man who probes the most difficult of emotional territory and mines it willingly for his art.

Angel Olsen has harnessed her drama in an orchestral horse and cart and taken it for a spin on her new album All Mirrors.

Undeniably beautiful, it’s the most cohesive album yet from the 32-year-old Chicago native.

The title track is a great litmus test to see if you’d like to dip your toes in. Evocative and complex, wall-to-wall strings descend into a messy, chaotic bridge, before swelling to its crescendo. The power of personal victory may be a little overwrought at times, but it’s easy to get sucked into her web of ever-expansive arrangements.