CD Reviews

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds | Push The Sky Away

Bad Seed Ltd. (2013)

By ZETH LUNDY | February 20, 2013

2.5 Stars

In which the 50-something singer-songwriter, nearly a decade into a semi-feverish creative rebirth, rips it up and starts again. Gone are the debauched blooze pangs of Bad Seed offshoot Grinderman, gone are the ecstatic hallelujahs of Abattoir Blues. Gone, too, is guitarist Mick Harvey, leaving Nick Cave as the band's sole original member. Much like the similarly low-key The Boatman's Call, Cave's highly anticipated 15th album with the Bad Seeds manages the puzzling feat of making a great band seem inconsequential, if not entirely absent. To put a more positive spin on it: bubbling tracks like "Water's Edge" and "We Real Cool" thrive on sparse arrangements, brooding tension, and oblique lyrical details; the band is there, waiting to strike. "Jubilee Street," the record's high point and current single, boasts not only narrative, but gorgeous melodic release in the form of Warren Ellis's violin. See also: "Higgs Boson Blues," quite nearly a classic Cave run-on, a vehicle for a modest choir of manly men, and a blues tune for a post–Large Hadron Collider world. When the so-called suspense is merely lackluster, as in the dull opener "We No Who U R" and the closing title track, Cave's usual alertness turns into a meandering lack of focus. Push the Sky Away feels heavy on breath-taking and woodshedding, an album of waiting for sparks to ignite. "She was a catch/We were a match/I was the match that would fire up her snatch," he notes with gusto in the ballad "Mermaids," fondly recalling those moments of inspired decadence, though not recreating them.

» ZETHLUNDY@GMAIL.COM

Topics: CD Reviews , Music, review, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, More

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