Updated September 24
One of the many perks of keeping up with Nick Cave‘s interactive fan page The Red Hand Files is that you might find out when his band, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, have new music coming out. After a fan named Joe wrote in asking when he could expect a new album from the vampiric Aussie, Cave gave a pretty straightforward response.
“You can expect a new album next week. It is called Ghosteen. It is a double album,” Cave wrote. “The songs on the first album are the children. The songs on the second album are their parents. Ghosteen is a migrating spirit.”
According to Cave, Part 1, aka “the children,” is comprised of eight songs, and Part 2, aka “the parents,” is two long songs connected by a spoken word performance.
He provided the track listing:
Part 1
“The Spinning Song Bright Horses”
“Waiting For You”
“Night Raid”
“Sun Forest”
“Galleon Ship”
“Ghosteen Speaks”
“Leviathan”
Part 2
“Ghosteen”
“Fireflies”
“Hollywood”
Cave then added a followup entry on his site because he seemingly realized that he forgot to share the cover art.
Ghosteen is Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ first album since 2016’s Skeleton Tree.
Though the musician didn’t initially share the release date for the new album, it was announced the following day. Ghosteen is set to premiere on YouTube at 6 p.m. ET October 3, per the press release, with the double album becoming available for streaming on all digital platforms the next day. The CD and vinyl are set to drop a month later on November 8, and are available for pre-order now.
When he’s not announcing new music, Cave is typically posting thoughtful and engaged responses to questions fans submit on his site. One of the standouts entailed Cave parsing Morrissey’s support of hard right anti-immigration politics, and a devastatingly beautiful open letter about processing the grief stemming from his son Arthur’s tragic death in 2015.
