Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Push the Sky Away

‘We know who you are,' is repeated over and over on album opener We No Who U R, an assertion we could never direct at the continually beguiling Nick Cave and his band of bad seeds, as once again they have delivered an album decidedly different from the last.

With co-founder Mick Harvey absent for the first time, this album has seen Warren Ellis come to the fore and his musicianship is firmly stamped on this record.  Where previous album Dig! Lazarus! Dig! was all screeching guitars and Nick Cave bluster, this album’s character blossoms through heartfelt  lyrics delivered with delicacy accompanied by spacious synthesiser and stringed compositions by Warren Ellis.

It is an album that relies on finer details, and achieves it's goals, in some ways it sees the band return to their roots with slow-burning melancholic songs. This sparseness is on display on Wide Lovely Eyes, a song that sees Cave unusually as the bystander, preoccupied by the sight of a loving couple on the beach below him.

And as always with Nick Cave there are songs that lean towards the darker, seedier side of life, such as the promiscuous Mermaids.  But these moments aren’t as prominent as they have been on past albums, it seems as though the waves of melancholy have washed over the furnace that usually burns within Cave.

The second half of the album starts with a menacing bass line on We Real Cool but it subsides with the lack of instrumentation and soft crooning vocals which allow the song to breathe and feel less intimidating.  Just one example of the toned down nature of this album compared to other Bad Seeds releases.

Higgs Boson Blues sees Cave at his most mischievous, moaning and groaning, and even sultry sounding vocals as he references Daniel Johnston, the devil ( with ‘100 black babies running from his genocidal jaw) and Hannah Montana in what sounds like a case of delirium as he drives through the desert heat in the dead of night with ‘flame trees on fire,’ around him.  Cooed backing vocals and lightly strummed guitar soften the mood once more, but it builds at the end with the backing chorus becoming louder along with crashing cymbals, before fading away as quick as they appeared.

Album title track and closer Push the Sky Away relies solely on synthesiser and vocal and is the most ethereal song on the album.  When he delivers the line, "And some people say it's just rock 'n' roll/Oh but it gets you right down to your soul," you know he means every word. It encapsulates the mood of the album in that sense and leaves you in no doubt as to Nick Cave’s frame of mind when it comes to creating music and chasing your dreams.  He urges the listener to look to the future, to know no boundaries and ‘keep on pushing the sky away.’

As a whole, this album is a masterclass in restraint.  Followers of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are aware that they have all the tools in their armory, they can pull out the guitars, the effects pedals and produce fireworks when they want to, but this album seems like a conscious decision on their part to reign it in.  After two raucous albums in Dig! Lazarus! Dig! and Grinderman 2, they have toned it done and changed direction once again, who knows what they've got in store next time round...

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By Garrett Hargan