Nick Cave duets with Danish soprano Else Torp on this haunting track. Torp was first championed by Cave in 2013, when he chose her version of Robert Burns' "My Heart's In The Highlands" to appear on a compilation CD put together by Mojo magazine.
Else Torp decided to sing "Distant Sky" as if it were a lullaby. "I didn't ask what it was about," she told Uncut magazine. "Looking at the text It could be a very cathartic statement from lovers, walking into the sea and dying together. It's a song that exists in its own right. I didn't want to probe and I wasn't tested. If you start being too specific in a creative situation you kill it. I'm like the listener who needs to create their own meaning."
During the sessions for Skeleton Tree, Nick Cave's 15-year-old son Arthur fell from a cliff and died from his injuries. Cave had written most of the album at the time of Arthur's death, but the tragedy did re-contextualize every line of every song. None more so than this invitation by Cave to his wife to join him in escaping to that distant sky Let us go now, my only companion Set out for the distant skies Soon the children will be rising, will be rising This is not for our eyes
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