REVIEW: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away

Always interesting, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (and Nick Cave in general) are back with a new album called Push the Sky Away. It's going to be a self-released Feb. 18th on Bad Seed Ltd. and finds the band recording without founding member Mick Harvey.

Musically, the album is workman like, but also gritty and introspective with the rock elements buried way down below the surface. It sounds like Lou Reed or how I imagine Jim Morrison would have sounded had he lived into older age and made solo albums. The record doesn't reach out and grab me immediately -- I feel like I'm missing something. I've never been THAT into Nick Cave, and I've held an appreciation for the man and his band's music, but never poured over his catalog. Perhaps it is time to start? "Jubilee Street," for instance, is a gorgeous piece of music. Grinding atonal bits mesh with strings and good chord changes. The entire album also reminds me of something Rick Rubin might have produced: it's quite dry, but has depth at the same time.

According to wiki Cave, "the songs illustrate how the internet has influenced 'significant events, momentary fads and mystically-tinged absurdities' and 'question how we might recognise and assign weight to what's genuinely important.'" This is how modern songwriting happens ... Sit down with Google and find some fucked up subject matter. Its fascinating to think that Cave just sits around and follows links - bouncing around the Internet from sick disease pics, to the history of the Black Plague, to Robert Johnson, to dabbling in porno, reading the NY Times, and flipping though red carpet photos...is this rock 'n' roll?