Nick Cave has admitted that he regrets recording his 2016 album “Skeleton Tree” so soon after the death of his son.

Arthur Cave died unexpectedly in July 2015 at the age of 15 after falling from a cliff near Brighton. At the time, Cave was working on his 16th studio album, which was released later the following year.

In a new interview with The Sunday TimesCave said today he wished he had not rushed into the project so quickly because it would have only made his suffering worse.

“This is the only album that made things worse,” he said. “My mental health got worse because I made it so soon after my son died, and I shouldn’t have done that.”

Cave further admitted that while he and his wife Susie Bick had found some happiness again, they could never “come to terms” with the loss of Arthur and the subsequent death of his older son Jethro, who died in 2022 at the age of 31 from a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

“I’m not sure what happens after death, but I worry about how Arthur’s spirit would feel seeing the suffering his mother and father went through because of his death… One thing we can tell him now is that everything is OK. I say that with caution,” he said.

“There is no closure. Things are not back to where they were before Arthur or Jethro died. But we are happy.”

It comes just weeks after he previously reflected on the deaths of his two sons, explaining in an interview with that the grief he felt allowed him to feel “more connected” to the people around him. ABC Australia.

He said at the time: “There is the initial catastrophic event where we eventually reorganise ourselves so that as we age we become creatures of loss, and this is part of our fundamental structure of who we are as human beings. We are things of loss. This is not a tragic element of our lives, but rather a deepening that brings incredible meaning.”

He continued: “For most of my life I was just impressed by my own genius, you know, and I had an office where I sat and wrote every day, and everything else that happened in my life was secondary. That just completely collapsed, and I saw the folly of it, the kind of shameful complacency of the whole thing.”

Elsewhere, Cave and the Bad Seeds recently released “Long Dark Night” – the third single from their upcoming album “Wild God”.

The LP will be released on August 30th, contains 10 songs and was co-produced by Warren Ellis. You can pre-order it here.

The band will embark on a UK and EU tour later this autumn. Tickets can be purchased here.