Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Push the Sky Away

After a big week at the shop and across the city of Brighton (BBC, The Guardian, NME, @residentbrighton), this Sunday we visit a relatively contemporary classic, a trip thirteen years back and a seminal record from the Nick Cave cannon.

There are few artists who have reinvented themselves as convincingly, or as often, as Nick Cave has. Since debuting over 45 years ago in 1979 with The Boys Next Door (later becoming The Birthday Party), his progressions through ferocious post-punk, gothic bombast and rock intensity into stately balladeering, literary visions and cinematic intensity has no equal. In a career of purple patches, 2013’s Push the Sky Away arrived off the back of the Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus and Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! albums (not to forget the not-so-small matter of the eponymous Grinderman album in the middle), a trio of intense rock and roll belters, making the stranger, quieter and more intense Push the Sky Away even more of a dramatic left turn. It is a remarkably restrained album, built on sparse arrangements, looping motifs and a palpable sense of space. There is a strange duality in that some of the most commanding and enthralling moments in his storied career are featured here as whispers rather than shouts. Expansive, emotional and rich in surreal imagery. 

Cave has spoken about becoming fascinated by the endless stream of information available online while writing the lyrics. Rather than telling traditional narratives, he found himself pulling together fragments of internet culture, news stories, historical references and surreal asides. Google searches, Wikipedia rabbit holes and contemporary headlines all found their way into songs that feel simultaneously rooted in the present whilst completely dreamlike.
 

“With regards to Jubilee Street, it’s interesting as it’s a made-up version, I mean, I don’t know that anyone has ever really witnessed a foetus on a leash outside the library”
- Derry

Besides Cave being a local at the time, a regular shopper and writing about Jubilee Street (which is just a stone’s throw from our front door), the album holds an interesting place in the Resident story as it controversially ended up being 2013’s No. 2 album of the year behind Matthew E. White’s Big Inner.

"Nick came in just doing some shopping, right to the counter and his opening gambit was, "who the fuck is Matthew E. White?”. I think he probably half scared Leo who was working behind the counter to death, but he did buy it, so he probably does now know who the fuck Matthew E. White is. In retrospect, good as Big Inner was, Push The Sky Away should obviously have been album of the year, not the runner up. Probably worth it for one of the funniest ever moments in the shop though. So, belated apologies to Nick. Just hope he liked Matthew E. White’s album'”
- Derry

Rather than relying on traditional rock arrangements, the band embraced repetition, silence and atmosphere, leaving space for Cave's voice and Warren Ellis’ haunting textures to carry the emotional weight. Push the Sky Away would mark the beginning of an extraordinary late-career transformation that would continue through Skeleton Tree, Ghosteen and Carnage, establishing a new creative partnership between Cave and Ellis that remains central to both artists’ work today.

Push the Sky Away is a beautiful album, a masterclass in subtlety and restraint.