Album review wrap-up: Nick Cave transforms, the Highwomen rise, Tool returns and more

NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS, "GHOSTEEN" (GHOSTEEN/BAD SEED)

"I'm transforming, I'm vibrating, I'm glowing, I'm flying, look at me now," Nick Cave sang six years ago on the pivotal "Jubilee Street." The six-minute track planted the seeds of the fully realized 68-minute song cycle that is "Ghosteen."

Since the feral fury and dark humor of the Grinderman era (circa 2007-10), Cave has done a little transforming himself. With "Push the Sky Away" (2013), Cave started recording music that somehow felt different, more open, consoling. The death of his 15-year-old son Arthur shadowed the release of "Skeleton Tree" (2016), and "Ghosteen" bears the full weight of that loss.

Though billed as collaboration with his magnificent long-running band, the Bad Seeds, Cave turns "Ghosteen" into a hushed, intimate work. There's an industrial rattle at the outset of "Waiting for You" and barely-there percussion on "Leviathan," a rumbling bass