Push the Sky Away

Nick Cave comes back to his main project

Push The Sky Away, the fifteenth album made by Nock Cave and his ensemble The Bad Seeds, was put out shortly after remarkable events in the activity of Nick himself and his band. The musicians took a kind of break in 2006 as they launched a side project called Grinderman in 2006. The garage rock they played there was a real escape for the musicians who needed to catch their breath after playing serious and sophisticated material as The Bad Seeds. Then, in 2009, the ensemble parted ways with Mick Harvey, an amazing multi-instrumentalist and a man who had given this band twenty five years. His departure had to have its effect on the sounding of the next work by Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds. Push The Sky Away was out in 2013, after two years of hard work. It is sufficient to say that the CD was recorded in a ancient mansion in France, which was to emphasize the exquisiteness and stylishness of the music Nick Cave and his band offer.

Push The Sky Away: another side to ballads

Nick Cave veiled his new release with a thick shroud of riddles and intrigues by saying the fresh work is not like anything of what his band had released so far. Well, Push The Sky Away is not going to offer any of noisy guitars and vibrant rhythms which marked the style of Grinderman, which is a good thing. After all, with the long hiatus the musicians had, it would be just nice to have something more classical and traditional, the kind of music you can unmistakably take as that of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds. All in all, this is the case. The fifteenth studio effort by this outfit is a collection of top notch slow or nearly slow songs which, however, can hardly be labeled as ballads in the traditional sense of the word. Love and romance is extra here. Instead, the nerves are raw, the eyes wide open and the breath labored. The instrumental minimalism of the set opener We No Who U R works perfectly to create the general atmosphere for the following events to unfold. Yet, these are rather descriptions than narrations. Cave gives you not the plot, but the images, powerful and complex, endowed with brief but deep characteristics. For example, Water’s Edge is centered around the stand between helpless and doomed women, and soulless and insatiable men. It is up to the audience to decide on the finale.

Nick Cave’s grim sagas

Cave’s somber, seemingly void of any emotions, voice symbolizes a universal doom nobody is able to escape. However, this is not a remote future or some unknown fantastic world, but today’s reality we make. Thus the songs of Push The Sky Away are a lot more tragic and scarier than any gothic tales with their classic imagery. The key track of the record, Jubilee Street, is an obscure story of the main character’s bride who vanished in the postwar time. This is an endlessly sad gothic blues with guitar that is a rare thing on this album. We Real Cool grips your psychic tight with dry rhythm-section, cold synths and sporadic piano. Higgs Boston Blues is a little lyrics and romance in the sea of despair, and in the end comes another somber theme, the title song. One could say that after the departure of an important musicians, Nick Cave took up more responsibility as he came out with uneasy texts and various vocal techniques from undistinguishable spoken word to inspired singing. Whatever the case, Push The Sky Away is an emphatic work recorded in a peculiar style and deserving attention of all Nick Cave’s followers.