User Score
Universal acclaim- based on 387 Ratings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 336 out of 387
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Mixed: 14 out of 387
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Negative: 37 out of 387
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Sep 9, 2016Heartbreaking, emotional album. It's one of his most finest creations, if not his best one so far. "Skeleton Tree" is far more deep than Boatman's Call or even No More Shall We Part. There is a lot of intimacy on this record.
Album of the year for me. -
Jan 22, 2017Usually great albums here get more appreciation from Users' ratings than Critics', but this is not the case and I really don't know why. Beautifully written, tragic, heartbreaking. Real art. One of the best albums of decade. Feel pity for those who gave rating lower than 7.
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Jan 4, 2017
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Sep 12, 2016Listened to this about 7-8 times since release already, and it just feels so strong. Easily in the top 5 Nick Cave albums, and he has A LOT of good albums.
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Sep 12, 2016What a beautiful album. Nick Cave's emotion is heard in every note and it's heartbreaking, haunting and the music is atmospheric and slow. His lyrics really make you think about humanity and to take everyone in your life seriously.
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Sep 9, 2016Unlike anything released in this entire decade so far, for it serves as a painful reminder of the inevitability of death, yet does so in a seamlessly beautiful and haunting fashion. Absolutely breathtaking.
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Sep 11, 2016
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Sep 9, 2016Sorrow breeds beauty. You can feel the depth of Nick Cave's sorrow seep through each and every song on this album. You can tell that the loss of His son had a deep impact on Him and that He tried to make this album as a tribute to His sons memory.
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Sep 12, 2016The sparsity of the arrangements is almost as painfully beautiful as the lyrics. Every song is bleakly perfect but I cannot reiterate how much I love "Rings of Saturn."
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Sep 26, 2016This is a very difficult album to listen all the way through. It is the aural equivalent of a car crash that you can't look away from. Cave's delivery and singing is quite possibly the most painful put to tape since Nick Drake's "Pink Moon". Not for the faint of heart, this is one of Nick Cave's best.
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Sep 11, 2016If you want beautiful pain, you found it. As dark as Disintegration, and as chilling as anything I've experienced with Joy Division, Nick Cave brought all he dealt with it and made us, nay forced us, to understand and empathize with it. A masterpiece indeed.
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Oct 15, 2016
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Oct 29, 2016
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Sep 9, 2016It's like a Franz Kafka novel with melody. Painfully beautiful. It's sad such a devastating event had to take place for this but it did give us a true masterpiece.
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Sep 16, 2016One of the most heartbreaking, suffered, painful album I've heard. The lyrics so intense and emotional make eveything more and more devastating. A great piece of art
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Sep 11, 2016This is probably the most emotional and heartbreaking album I've heard this year. You can feel Nick's pain on the songs. It is just gorgeous. Quoting a review from other website:
"I want to listen to this in the dark. I don't want to see anything, I just want this to fill my ears. Fill my head. And I want to be alone." ~ austincrave235. -
Sep 16, 2016
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Dec 4, 2016
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Sep 20, 2016Top 3 AOTY in no order: 1.Radiohead: A moon shaped pool 2. Frank Ocean: Blonde 3. Nick Cave: Skeleton Tree. For me this three albums are masterpieces!
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Sep 21, 2016Good album! First time listening to this band, but I liked what I heard. This would have been a 9/10 if it didn't have so many songs/parts with talking. But really good either ways. Reminds me of both 'A Moon Shaped Pool' and 'Ray of Light'.
BEST: Girl in Amber, I Need You, Distant Sky -
Sep 28, 2016This will rank very high in my list of this year's most overrated albums.
A very moderate Nick Cave album is still not bad at all of course.
Okay, losing your 15 year old son is truly heartbreaking, but does this make Skeleton Tree a masterpiece: no no no it does not. -
Feb 3, 2018
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Feb 6, 2018
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May 12, 2022
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Nov 20, 2019Simply, quite possibly the most perfectly fragile, devastating and hopeful album of the 21st Century. Exquisite in its pain.
Awards & Rankings
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MagnetNov 16, 2016No, we haven't heard this Cave before, and though magnetic, emotive and tenderly merciful, one prays for his sake that we never hear it again. [No. 137, p.51]
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The WireNov 8, 2016It feels distasteful to rate so powerful, so raw an album in any aesthetic terms and yet it brilliantly, blackly, radiates life. Skeleton Tree is a work of mourning, yes; a work of reverie, yes; and also an immensely moving attempt to reach out of blackness towards life. [Nov 2016, p.65]
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UncutOct 25, 2016The songs are pillowed by vaporous electronic backing that recalls the slow-moving, aquatic drift of Push The Sky Away and the sonic explorations of Cave and Ellis' Minimalist Soundtracks. [Dec 2016, p.26]