 |
| Album cover to Push the Sky Away, coincidentally from Wikipedia. The cover features Nick Cave on the left opening a shutter to reveal his nude wife, Susie Bick. The photo was apparently taken in their bedroom, too. |
Nick Cave had been involved with music from a very young age, originally participating in church choir in the small town he was born in (Warracknabeal, Victoria, Australia). From a young age, Cave also often found himself in trouble. This resulted in his being sent to boarding school at Melbourne's Caulfield Grammar School. Here, too, he became involved in the choir. Tragedy struck the young Cave when he was aged 19. His mother was bailing him out of jail for burglary and had the difficulty of telling the young Cave that his father had been killed in a car accident as well. This culmination of events led to Cave starting to express his thoughts and feelings through music.
While at the Caulfield Grammar School, Cave had become friends with Mick Harvey, Phill Calvert, John Cochivera, Brett Purcell, and Chris Coyne. Together, the six would form the first major band Cave was in, The Birthday Party. The group initially played proto-punk covers of songs by musicians like Lou Reed and David Bowie. By 1977, The Birthday Party had become very integral in Australia's post-punk scene. Some changes to the lineup brought in Rowland Howard who became a major player in the writing of the music and lyrics for the band. In 1980, the group relocated to London then West Berlin. Cave became known for his provocative stage antics. His lyrics often concerned topics like sin, curses, and damnation, often revolving around horror stories. As such, Cave was often labeled as a goth (which he, like so many of his contemporaries, absolutely hated). The song "Release the Bats" was supposed to poke fun at the goth scene that The Birthday Party had been so regularly attributed to, but instead provided yet another anthem for the scene. However, by 1984, The Birthday Party had disbanded due to differences between Cave and Howard.
 |
| Nick Cave when he was in The Birthday Party. This appears to be a press promo photo, but I'm unsure who took it. |
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have recorded and released fifteen albums over the years. The majority have been met with critical acclaim even as the group's style has steadily changed over time. Members came and went with Cave remaining the only constant member of the group. The mid-90s found Cave marrying current wife, Susie Bick (who, as a fun factoid, was the model featured on The Damned's cover art for Phantasmagoria and is also the woman on the album cover of Push the Sky Away). 2006 saw Cave and members of The Bad Seeds forming a new side project, Grinderman, which showcased Cave on guitar in addition to his usual role as vocalist.
In 2007, Cave was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame for his work over the years (at the same time, he essentially inducted The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds during his acceptance speech as he felt none of this would have been possible without everyone else). 2008 saw the release of the fourteenth studio album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! and was followed in early 2009 with the departure of Mick Harvey, who had worked with Cave for the last 36 years.
 |
| Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 2013. Not sure who took this photo, but I found it while perusing Brooklyn Vegan's site |
Additionally, Nick Cave, being a jack-of-all-trades kind of person, has also written original film scores for a number of movies, wrote music to a handful of theatre productions, written a few novels, acted in a few movies, and wrote the script for a couple films.
Push the Sky Away could be summed up as the complete anti-thesis of everything The Birthday Party was. This album is very quiet, gloomy, and thoughtful. A review from NME calls this album a "majestic and desolate masterpiece" and dub Nick Cave "the grand lord of gothic lushness" (http://www.nme.com/reviews/nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds/14083#6mWxcBmKK4eyCeDd.99). (Careful Peter Murphy, you may have a contest with Nick Cave for being the "Godfather of Goth," a title neither of you care for or really want, but will get regardless, haha)
As Nick Cave puts it, he and the band entered the studio with "unformed and pupal" ideas for the songs and the band "[transformed] them into things of wonder" (http://thequietus.com/articles/10819-nick-cave-the-bad-seeds-new-album). Cave has also mentioned how random perusals on Google and Wikipedia figured largely into the lyrical content, suggesting in general how the Internet has played a role in shaping what we as a society view as important and detailing certain events, fads, rumors, etc.
Push the Sky Away opens with "We No Who U R," which is coincidentally the first single from the album. The song opens with a soft drum beat, some bass guitar, and what sounds like a keyboard. Lyrically, I'm not sure what this song gets at. But the lyrics and music mesh in a delicate harmony, purposely complementing each other (i.e. the music is soft and mellow while the lyrics mention things like harmony of nature: "We go down with the dew in the morning light/The tree don't know what the little bird brings/We go down with the dew in the morning/And we breathe, it in/There is no need to forgive"). This song is great for setting the overall tone and mood for the rest of the album.
The second track is "Wide Lovely Eyes" which opens with a faster paced guitar strumming and some ambient background sounds. The lyrics of this song could suggest meeting someone special and sharing good times and memories with them, but that a time comes in which the two must say goodbye. Additionally, the time together the two spent will be regarded as make believe ("All among the myths and legends we create/And all the laughing stories we tell our friends"). The song also contains references to mermaids (which is the title of a song found later on the album), which could have been something Cave spent time researching for fun and learning more about.
Next is "Water's Edge" which is one of my favorite off the album. The song starts with a dark, pressing bass part before Nick Cave's brooding vocals start in, accompanied by moody string arrangements. I don't really know what the lyrics are about. On the surface, it's easy to read the lyrics as some statement of prostitution, but the lyrics at the end speak more to the coming of love ("It's the will of love/It's the thrill of love/Ah, but the chill of love is coming on"). Additionally, there is mention often of a "speech" that the boys and girls are reaching for. What exactly is this speech Cave writes about? Cave has been known to write about biblical things in the past, so is this a nod towards finding a certain speech in the Bible? Regardless, I much enjoy the darker nature this song carries.
The sixth track is another favorite of mine, "We Real Cool." It, similar to "Water's Edge" begins with a pressing bass part and intermittent dark string arrangements. The song, to me, seems to be a statement against things like Wikipedia being so prevalent. The argument here is similar to a specific argument from Peter Murphy on the goth subculture. There is a quote floating around the Internet (but I can't find the interview it is from, so it may very well be fake) in which Murphy talks about being able to at least identify with the goths that were the early fans of Bauhaus (though, remember, Murphy is not goth, nor was Bauhaus, and it's just all the media gone wild...which is true, actually). But, Murphy has a hard time identifying with what is often called "goth" today for what he sees are youth following something blindly, without thought or knowledge. They find something dark and call it goth without understanding that well before the media began dubbing bands like Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees as goth, there was a well-defined meaning for what goth was. Goth was an architectural style, a particular art form, a certain piece of renaissance, a form of literature (and it is perhaps the horror and brooding mood of the music that somewhat resembles the dreary gothic romance writing that led to these bands receiving their unwanted classification). But, point being (and yes, I am getting to a point...eventually) is that the goth of today is mostly a cheap imitation of what it once was. It's not to say none of today's younger goth members have it right (I'd like to think I'm a bit more in tune with what goth originally was, though I'm sure there's plenty of things I flummox repeatedly...maybe I should strive to dissociate from the title entirely and simply be myself, whatever that may be), but there's a certain blindness involved nowadays. So, getting back to this song, I feel lyrically Cave is trying to say something similar, but on a larger scale. You wear clothes, but you don't know who designed them or who made them. You have a book that someone wrote, but you've never read it. Who measured the distance between the planets? Wikipedia is so great because it has all these answers and you don't have to remember them. But as a result, it's so easy to simply follow when someone says something is real cool, but not know why or what it is. Even the title adds to the tone, "we real cool." As if to say, "Yeah, we real cool! Look at us, we so cool, we listen to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds!" "Yeah, but who are Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds?" "Uhh..." A long point to make, but this song, to me anyways, is absolutely beautiful, musically, and lyrically carries a strong message that I identify with.
The last song I want to talk about is the final song on the album and the album's namesake, "Push the Sky Away." The song opens with very moody, ambient sounds, with light accenting bass and drum beats. I don't know what the lyrics are getting at, exactly. On the one hand, they suggest that a person should continue to be themselves and push to discover new things about their world and themselves. Just keep on pushing the sky away. Even if you think you have everything you ever wanted, there's still more out there for you, just keep pushing the sky away and find it. I just absolutely love this one, musically and lyrically.
On the whole, Push the Sky Away is a moody, often dark, yet thoughtful album. As I said earlier, I haven't actually listened too much to the rest of the catalog from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, so I'm not entirely sure how this album stacks against the previous fourteen. Most reviews I glanced through find this to be a much slower piece than the prior albums, more contemplative, and more moody. Even if it is vastly different from the previous albums, this one has inspired me to really sit down and start listening to more from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, something I've been intending for years but just hadn't gotten around to. Fantastic work to everyone involved on this one!
Sound Off! What is your favorite track from this album? How does this album stack up to the previous fourteen from The Bad Seeds? What do you think of Cave's approach to writing the lyrics for this album?
Rating: 5 out of 5 (I don't know how this stacks to other Bad Seeds albums, but as a standalone album, this is just amazing stuff)
More Information: Official Site of Nick Cave
No comments:
Post a Comment