PTSA
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Push The Sky Away – I jumped ahead and got the cloth-bound limited edition book with CD and DVD. The CD is the best part; the book is pretty good too, with reprints of Cave’s magnificent lyrics, for people who can’t make out what he’s saying (although actually it’s never too hard to make out what he’s saying). The DVD contains in-studio videos for songs that didn’t make it into the final cut.
In a way the DVD should be fascinating, with the fanboys trying to imagine where they might fit on the album, or why they were cut; the fact is, of course, that they were probably pulled simply because they don’t really fit on the album. It might also be because they aren’t very good. But it is nice to see Nick and friends in the studio, looking very serious indeed.
The album is great, one of Cave’s best in recent years (actually, this isn’t really saying much – they’ve all been good); it starts with songs that are a bit over-produced, like “We No Who U R” (pretty), “Wide Lovely Eyes” (stark and simple, with pretty keyboards), and “Water’s Edge” (a weirdly unsatisfying story about whorish DC chicks), although the latter ends on a great note with the lyrics “It’s the will of love, it’s the thrill of love, but it’s the chill of love that’s coming down – people!”.
The album really picks up with “Jubilee Street”, a wild storytelling song about hookers – the song really cooks. Great vocal phrasings by Cave (including a Beggars Banquet era Jagger-esque “I’ve got a foetus… on a LEASH”), cool sparse guitar and jazzy percussion, before the swelling violin sounds kick in. Nice. He mentions a “10 ton catastrophe on a 60 pound chain”, wonder what that is. There’s good insanity in the final line – “I am an embryo eating dark oxygen. I am glowing. I am flying. Look at me now.” Crazy stuff. Nice build up to the end too, with the children’s choir bits (more Beggars Banquet era Stones-copying there too, actually…). “Mermaids” is a fun, tense little charmer, but the really good one is “We Real Cool”, with its weird reference to the distance of the stars, great Nick Cave roamings and groanings. “Finishing Jubilee Street” is a cool meta-songwriting exercise, memory ramble, a wild combo of moody music, talking, singing, and a wonderful children’s choir. Nice. The standout piece on the album is “Higgs Boson Blues”, a weird piece of Geneva melancholia that starts off like the Stones classic “Sister Morphine”; it is also the longest song on the album, nearly eight minutes. The lyrics sheet – which you need to read to understand what the hell he’s babbling about, with references to “mummified cats” and all – spreads out over four pages even! The final song on the album is probably the best – quite a feat, since “Higgs Boson Blues” should be pretty hard to top. It’s the title track and is dominated by Cave’s voice and a spooky church organ (there’s a bit of drum going on there too). Lovely.
Overall, this is one horny album, with Cave referencing whores, bimbos, girlfriends, Hannah Montana (and Mylie Cyrus), black patches, and a lot of girls.
The two songs on the DVD are “Needle Boy” and “Lightning Bolts “. Both show the musicians playing their parts, with lyrics running along the side (they don’t appear in the booklet). “Needle Boy” is tinted red and is about a needle boy and all of the little objects he possesses, and musically it’s just Jim’s weird organ stuff and Nick’s lyrics. Nick is wearing a polo shirt and dancing dramatically in front of the mic. Warren Ellis is messing around with a mess of pedals and effects boxes that litter a persian rug in the studio, and at one point is grinding away on his trademark violin. The song ends in weird studio noise. “Lightning Bolts” is visually similar to “Needle Boy”, but it’s set in green. And while both songs are fairly sparse in arrangement, this song is faster and more electronic, with plenty of weird noises. It shows Nick working the mic again with his weird studio dance, Warren and producer Nick Launay in the control room, Warren playing a flute that is miced up to sound like an angel’s choir (or is it a stunt?), and then the Bad Seeds at the mic singing the backing vocals (it’s probably staged – I doubt that this song was recorded live). The song is interesting, a surreal tale of Nick’s encounter with Zeus over a pramful of lightning bolts.
The cloth-bound booklet is cool, with pages of type-written lyrics with blackened-out sections (our mind wanders – what words did those sections contain?), and great pictures of the band interacting; I particularly like the one that faces “Finishing Jubilee Street”, showing Nick walking with Warren Ellis and listening to something that he’s saying, Jim’s hand gesture expressive in its own way. A bit of fantasy there too – I wonder what they’re talking about and if it’s fascinating, or if it’s just a bit of boring junk.