"I'm a 10-ton catastrophe on a 60 lbs. chain..."
I just finished listening to Push Away the Sky, and on the first and only listen as I write this article, I’m prepared to say I’d guess it to be an album that will grow on you. In the interest of full disclosure, I was listening to the album on “Random” which was unintentional but it happened so any sense of a building mood may have been lost on me.
To that end, this is a tale of two albums. One that features Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and another that features a ****ty impression of Leonard Cohen as he’s fronting Explosions in the Sky. The latter isn’t terrible, but it is certainly boring.
Regarding those songs – Cave’s voice seems far less melodic than usual, and unlike Cohen, the lyrics seem to be as vague as some band fresh out of the clubs. To his credit though, he may just be mirroring the music. While spacey, abstract music isn’t necessarily my thing, I do enjoy it and I can certainly say I’ve heard it done better. I’d say on the album there are maybe 3 or 4 songs (our of 9) that violate these offenses listed prior.
But I don’t want to make this a complete trashing of the record, because when Cave is on, as always, he’s on. The three tracks I’d really suggest you try out are (in no order): Higgs Boson Blues; Water’s Edge; and Jubilee Street.
Higgs Boson, clocking in as the longest track on the album (7:51), sounds a lot more Waits than Cohen which is to say that there is more emphasis on character (it seems to me) than symbols, and, unlike the tracks I’m accusing him of being Cohen on, the lyrics aren’t complete ****. Maybe this lends itself to Cave’s writing style, or maybe he’s just not dealing with spacey nonsense behind him, but either way it’s a step in the wright direction. He does name-drop Hannah Montana, but this is the sort of thing I’ve come to expect from the Bad Seeds, a little tweak here and there to make sure you’re paying attention.
Water’s Edge reminds me a lot of some of the material on Henry’s Dream, but also seems to draw from the experiments Cave was working toward here – it almost sounds like a broken pantoum. The music is dark, brooding and he repeat themes in the song as if he’s on the verge of a mental breakdown where the mind, in an attempt to find reason, scans over the grasses of an experience to find some missing piece that will make everything complete and logical.
As for Jubilee Street, you’ve probably heard it. It was the song you could get first and I can see why. The pacing of the song is classic Cave (in the latest years) which I always take to mean a musical arrangement that seems to suggest that all the bizarre oddities that crop up in the town the Bad Seeds live in are regular business. Nothing odd; nothing to see here. Just another day in the universe. And to me, this is where the strength of the band tends to come from. This sober observation of all the beauty and horror that comes with paying attention to the ****storm that just strolls by your office park on a daily basis. In a Nick Cave world, true nightmares hide in plain sight in broad daylight, and what’s worse is that unless you stop to smell the roses, you’re never going to know the oncoming tsunami that comes from living in the world of civilized society. To quote the song itself, “I’m a 10-ton catastrophe on a 60-lbs. chain.” That catastrophe is riding the bus with you, checking Facebook on its smartphone. – Fix up; look sharp.