Nick Cave’s 15th album with his Bad Seeds, Push The Sky Away, is a curious beast – not only is it the first album released since the dissolution of Cave’s merrily id-worshiping side-project Grinderman, but it’s also the first Bad Seeds record done without Cave’s longtime partner in aural assault Mick Harvey.
It shows. Warren Ellis’s hands are all over this record, and gone are Harvey’s signature spidery, jagged soundscapes that defined Cave’s work, such as From Her To Eternity, Tender Prey and Let Love In.
Which is not to say Push The Sky Away is an inferior work – rather, it’s the most dramatic detour from the classic Bad Seeds “sound” Cave has taken so far in his career. He certainly seems to have exorcised the rambunctious and zealous id-gone-wild personae that was so prevalent in both Grinderman and in the Bad Seeds’ Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!; it’s been replaced with an older, more ruminative geezer who’s crashed to Earth and been left alone to grapple with the meatier questions that curse the flesh and the spirit.
Here on this record we find him staring down into the abyss with weary eyes and dutifully reporting to the listener what the abyss has to say. We Real Cool is an open letter of sorts to God from us ants that asks if He knows we even exist. A thrumming, threatening bass-line hovers menacingly over the track that is very reminiscent of Tupelo. Water’s Edge, with its melancholic refrain of “You grow old and you grow cold”, is striking in its orchestration. Very Dirty Three.
The sprawling eight-minute Higgs Boson Blues is a corker that rewards the listener the most, as Cave drives his car down to Geneva and ruminates darkly about such themes as Robert Johnson’s deal with Lucifer “with his canon law and 100 black babies running from his genocidal jaw” and other heady things as science and religion wage a war that bleeds blackly over every damn thing.
Everything ends sometime. The closing title track sounds as if it were recorded in an old decrepit church, all spooky and eerie organs, militaristic drums and demonic bass (served up by old Bad Seed Barry Adamson, natch) – and it’s Cave, probably, at his most vulnerable.
There’s something hidden in the folds of this record that slowly becomes unraveled, like a puzzle box, after repeated listens. After ten listens, this reviewer hasn’t found that hidden theme – but damned if I’m not going to try.
BY THOMAS BAILEY
Best Track: Higgs Boson Blues
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: DIRTY THREE, GRINDERMAN, The Boatman’s Call NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
In A Word: Cave-esque
