Ghosteen a welcome surprise for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds fans
Nick Cave throws away the album release rulebook by telling fan in email newsletter to expect ‘album next week’.
With the surprise announcement of a new double album to be released next week, Australian rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have joined an unlikely grouping that includes Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar, David Bowie and Radiohead.
What links these acts is the strategy of announcing an imminent release — or, in the case of Beyonce’s 2013 self-titled album, simply making it available for sale — without any of the usual preamble of drip-feeding details to fans and media outlets with the hopeful intent of building anticipation across several months.
That’s the traditional approach favoured by most record labels, which draw up release and marketing schedules well in advance. Independent acts such as the Bad Seeds, however, can use their comparative agility and mobility in an attempt to attract the fleeting attention of casual music listeners, whose freedom of choice can become paralysing when about two-thirds of the global music market is dominated by streaming services.
In this case, the Australian band leader chose to publicise the news through another unusual outlet: his email newsletter, The Red Hand Files, where he began replying directly to fan questions in September last year.
On Monday, the day after his 62nd birthday, Cave issued his 62nd newsletter in response to a query from a British follower.
“Dear Joe, You can expect a new album next week,” he wrote. “It is called Ghosteen. It is a double album … The songs on the first album are the children. The songs on the second album are their parents. Ghosteen is a migrating spirit. Love, Nick.”
Seven minutes after sending that email, Cave followed it with another that showed the cover artwork: an unusually colourful scene that features flamingoes, butterflies, peacocks, a rainbow and a lamb. The cover of the previous Bad Seeds studio album, Skeleton Tree — which made its debut at No 1 on the ARIA chart in September 2016 — was almost entirely black.
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