Skeleton Tree's minimal production and "less polished" sound incorporates elements of electronica and ambient music and, like Push the Sky Away, features extensive use of synthesizers, drum machines and loops.
One More Time with Feeling, a documentary film about the aftermath of Cave's son's death and the recording process of Skeleton Tree, accompanied the album's release.
Directed by Andrew Dominik, the film received a limited release and was conceived by Cave to explain the context and themes of Skeleton Tree without conducting interviews with the media.
Final overdubs for Skeleton Tree were recorded at Air Studios in London, with engineers Kevin Paul and Jake Jackson, in early 2016.
[2] Several performances from the final recording sessions were shot for the album's accompanying documentary film One More Time with Feeling, directed by Andrew Dominik.
[5] Several lyrics were "semi-improvised" in subsequent recording sessions as Cave had expressed a desire to move on from "narrative-based songs", claiming he had "lost faith" in them.
[20] The front-cover artwork features a solid black background, with the band name and album title in monospace-style green font in the bottom-left centre.
"[21] Paste referred to Skeleton Tree's cover art as "stark" and "up front … leaving little to the imagination" and said it symbolised Cave "mak[ing] it plain to listeners that he's still mourning".
[29] One More Time with Feeling—featuring in-studio performances by the band and "accompanied by Cave's intermittent narration and improvised rumination"—was shot in both black and white and colour and in both 2D and 3D.
"[10] An early first-listen review in the Guardian referred to the album as "unsurprisingly, a very dark record", but said "there is also beauty, empathy and love as it veers between bewildered numbness and heartbreaking profundity".
The Guardian's Dave Simpson likened Cave's "instinctive howl from the heart and gut" to Johnny Cash's cover version of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt", saying "the frailties, wounds and vulnerabilities in his voice give the record its strength and humanity" and summarising it as "a masterpiece of love and devastation".
[8] In a first listen review, Jess Denham of The Independent wrote that Cave's "experience of bereavement is blisteringly undiluted" and called Skeleton Tree "a beautiful, shatteringly visceral portrait of grief".
"[19] In a review for AllMusic, Mark Deming was more reserved in his praise, noting that "the music lacks the dramatic, grand-scale arrangements of Cave's albums of the 21st century" and that "the final effect feels more like an author reading over ambient backing tracks than the sort of evocative sounds one might expect" from the band, but nonetheless concluding that although Skeleton Tree is a "tough listen … it's also a powerful and revealing one, and a singular work from a one-of-a-kind artist.
"[45] Slant Magazine writer Jeremy Winograd called Skeleton Tree "Cave's darkest, most emotionally devastating work to date" and said that although it "may not be Cave's most accessible album, owing both to the experimental nature of much of the music and the fact that its level of emotional rawness makes it a legitimately uncomfortable listen in places, it may very well be his best"; Wingrod rated the album four-and-a-half-out-of-five stars.
[16] Clash gave Skeleton Tree a nine-out-of-ten rating, with reviewer Josh Gray praising Cave and Ellis' songwriting and arrangements and summarising the album as "a stark, beautiful rendering of deep, profound pain.