Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away

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Hot take: I enjoyed Carnage more on first listen than Skeleton Tree or Ghosteen. I think there's an impressive emotional and sonic balance here that was missing on those albums, as it's both vicious (White Elephant) and heartbreaking (Shattered Ground) by turns. It's in the same vein as his recent work but feels like a step towards something else.
 
This guy is on one hell of a winning streak. I can't imagine anything in 2021 besting this. It's amazing how fresh it sounds. You can hear the influences but they are orchestrated in such a unique way.
 
Hot take: I enjoyed Carnage more on first listen than Skeleton Tree or Ghosteen. I think there's an impressive emotional and sonic balance here that was missing on those albums, as it's both vicious (White Elephant) and heartbreaking (Shattered Ground) by turns. It's in the same vein as his recent work but feels like a step towards something else.

Agreed for the most part. I still like Skeleton Tree a bit more, but this is certainly a more focused and varied album than Ghosteen. "White Elephant" is just stunning in its rage yet still sells that glorious gospel ending. "Albuquerque" is such a great, melancholy quarantine song too. I'll be spending lots of time relistening to Carnage - it feels like one of those records that you keep getting more out of with each new listen.

This will certainly be one of my top albums of the year, alongside Julien Baker.
 
I love Carnage. Nick Cave's run at the moment is fucked. Literally everything he's released since 2013 has been nothing short of stellar. This record feels a little more accessible than his last three records with The Bad Seeds, and has a bit more of a No More Shall We Part feel to it (Balcony Man, Alburquerque, my favourite song), with some quite welcome ragged edges (White Elephant). It doesn't come close to Ghosteen for mine, which I genuinely consider to be a 10/10 masterpiece, but I think it's right up there with and perhaps better than both Skeleton Tree and Push the Sky Away. Hand of God is the one song I'm not big on; I love the Radiohead-esque strings and the start, but I hate that dark slide after it ends and can't stand the "hand of god" chants

I like Pow Pow except for the parts where he sings "pow pow"

Ghosteen
Carnage
Skeleton Tree
Push the Sky Away
No More Shall We Part
Let Love In
Dig Lazarus Dig
 
Push the Sky Away is one of those revelatory records for me. It is firmly at the top of his discography and is one of my favorites of all time. I feel like everything great about this late-career run is in Push the Sky Away in some embryonic form.
 
I think I'd still put Skeleton Tree at the top of Cave's recent run. I feel like it has elements of what came immediately before and after it - a mixture of the more recognizable instrumentation of Push the Sky Away and the ambience of Ghosteen, with Carnage's soundscape of foreboding and loss.

I feel like it's tough to rank his current run with his previous decade's, given how different he's sounded since 2013. But this is how I'd rank the albums of his I've heard so far.

Let Love In
Murder Ballads
Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
Skeleton Tree
Carnage
Ghosteen
Push the Sky Away
The Boatman’s Call
Tender Prey
 
The funny part is, and I've mentioned this before, I've owned it for like at least five years, and never listened to it :lol: and I'm considering buying Boatman's Call and listening to that first :laugh:
 
Now, our friend, Andrew Dominik, the movie director, has come to London to film Warren and me attempting to play Carnage (and Ghosteen) live. Five years have passed since Andrew made ‘One More Time with Feeling’. Much has changed. But some things haven’t. The world still turns, ever perilous, but containing its many joys. Music remains a balm. Friendships endure. This letter is fractured. I am so excited to perform.

:hyper:
 
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Little bit of trivia some of you might get a kick out of. I was doing some research on Pavement, and Warren Ellis's old band Dirty Three came up, so I clicked on a link to a page about their history. And as I was scrolling through I saw this:

12-Nov-93
AU Melbourne,Melbourne Cricket Ground

Note: Dirty Three attend this U2 concert, because their friends Kim Salmon and The Surrealists are supporting. They got completely 'hammered' and the next day they go into the studio, recording their debut album, which is basically their live set at the time.



Amazing.
 
Dirty Three are still very much active, I think. That's a sick story though. Warren is such a fucking legend.

He did a lovely talk with Nick Cave about CARNAGE:

 
Finally sat down with CARNAGE and the lyric booklet tonight. A full, vinyl-sized booklet. And a drink. Been a long time since I've done that.

I still don't really like Hand of God, but the music in both it and Old Time are SO reminiscent Radiohead over the last decade, with the strings and electronics, so I like that. Old Time onwards it's a pretty spectacular record, and I absolutely think it hangs comfortably with Push the Sky Away, Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen (still his magnum opus, in my view). Just remarkable that an artist of his vintage has put out four of his very, very best records in succession.

Lyrically, it's a brilliant record. Carnage was so evocative that "I'm sitting on a balcony / reading Flannery O'Connor / with a pencil and a plan / this song is like a raincloud / that keeps circling overhead" took me immediately back to sitting on the balcony in our Yosemite accomodation overlooking a creek on a family holiday in 2010.

White Elephant is fucking incredible, the first half being what feels like a sick journey into the mind of a racist Trump supporter before yielding to a truly joyous, pious, borderline ridiculous singalong.

Albuquerque is my second favourite song of 2021 behind Hard Drive, I get emotional every time I listen to it. We've got the women's skateboarding final on in the background and it was really nice watching such a wholesome event where teenage girls were just having the time of their lives whilst listening to this beautiful, No More Shall We Part-esque piano ballad about the shit times we find ourselves in, next to my girl and my cat, with a memory in her paws.

And then the last two songs are just phenomenal. Shattered Ground is fucking gorgeous and heartbreaking, Warren's ambient instrumentation is out of this world and Nick's vocals just meet it so perfectly, you can almost visualise the two of them nodding at each other. And the lyric is a heart-wrenching look at relationships. And then Balcony Man is amazing too, so desolate at the start that it's almost as soul-destroying as Love is Blindness, before it yields ever so slightly and becomes fractionally less heartbreaking over gentle piano, whilst still sounding fully imbued with grief as Nick sings, "this morning is amazing and so are you..."

Nick fuckin Cave and Warren fuckin Ellis. Ugh :heart:
 
Every time I see this thread bumped by Cobbler I think it's going to be about him finally listening to the masterpiece Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus.

Alas, today is not that day.
 
Am I on track in White Elephant being told from the perspective of a colonial monument about to be torn down?
 
Incredibly sad story. And as you said, compounded on top of already losing his teenage son a few years ago, man how devastating.

I'm assuming mental illness was a major factor (will wait for official cause of death, but certainly 1 likelihood sticks out).
 
Today is not Abattoir of Orpheus day, Laz, one day it will be.

I'm finally getting around to penning my thoughts on the amazing Nick Cave & Warren Ellis show that took place at Hanging Rock in late November.

Hanging Rock is a 6.5 million year old volcanic rock formation about 45 minutes northwest of the Melbourne CBD, 'hanging' 100+ metres over the amphitheatre below. It is incredibly important to its Traditional Owners, encompassing at least three Tribes, and it makes for a truly magical concert backdrop; the sun sets to the west of the rock formation, the rock appears to change colour.

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Courtney Barnett opened, I hadn't seen her in a while, and she was great. I love the way she has fun with the lyrics in the chorus of Pedestrian at Best, Avant Gardener and Depreston ruled, Write a List of Things to Look Forward to is a great song off her (really good) latest album, and, in an awesome surprise, she brought out Kurt Vile for Over Everything from their collab record, which was really cool. He's not even touring here!

Rain kicked in just before CB started and persisted throughout her set, I got soaked and the ground was pretty muddy, but got a poncho and not much was gonna stop me from enjoying Cave & Ellis.

The band comes out - three impeccably-dressed backup singers, and Colin Greenwood, who is playing bass on this tour! - followed by Warren and then Nick.

(Oh, I also ran into an old friend. He passed my tiny yellow/green 1985 Honda City on the highway on the way in, looked over and saw me driving, and then we happened to get the same bus in. We got food, spent time in the rain, drank, chatted. It was lovely seeing him and we've caught up twice since. I love him, and it felt like a little gift from the universe after a tough year.)

I make no secret of the fact that I think that there is no musician on earth in the sort of form Cave is in at the moment, along with Warren. Push the Sky Away, Skeleton Tree, Ghosteen and Carnage are all phenomenal records. I'd been checking out setlists, and was delighted to see that this CARNAGE tour is largely it and Ghosteen. (Oddly, the shows he's playing with The Bad Seeds, of whom Warren is a member, are career-spanning. No more than three songs off any album, and only three tracks from Ghosteen, which is my favourite record of his and one of my favourites of all-time.)

Three Ghosteen tracks open the set, and then Carnage, which sounds quite similar to that record. At one point, Nick (whose crowd work has been amazing in the decade I've been a fan) says something about the number of slow songs. But it's such a credit to him and Warren and the band that it matters little. They had the crowd eating out of the palm of their hand from the second the show started. The location and setting helped as well I'm sure, but it was pretty stunning to see the reception from the crowd. A crowd of about 18,000 and 95% were on their feet, and a not-insignificant portion singing every word and dancing along to these barely-danceable songs. There's just something about his recent music, combined with the harrowing stories that surround it, and Cave's maturation into this warm, gentle, deep persona, that just all feeds into the magic and elevates the show beyond itself.

And then there's Warren. He is an absolute fucking delight. He is definitely far more beloved in this country, being Australian as well, and also the leader of Dirty Three, but people love him. His talents are a sight to behold, the gravity he brings to these relatively threadbare songs just sitting over a tiny keyboard placed on his knees. The sounds he brings out of the violin. His backup vocals. At one point he does "the sexiest song introduction ever" (Cave's words) that's just this pretty bogan "one, two, three, four..." At many other points, he gets giddy with glee and, shoeless, starts playing his violin and laughing while leaning backwards with his feet in the air. It's so great, their bromance is beautiful.

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White Elephant was fucking mega, I really hope they release a live set from this tour, cos that shit was fucking fire. So awesome watching Cave strut around the stage singing the aggressive, sweary first half of the song. Ghosteen was exceptional, and transcendent.

I Need You is the first song not from CARNAGE or Ghosteen, followed by a cover of Cosmic Dancer (just listening to the original now, this is perhaps a band I should listen to, I hear T. Rex and think only of Bang a Gong), then Breathless (great song, I should listen to Lyre of Blues, hey. Although I'm listening to the original now and it's a bit on-the-nose). Hand of God great fun, quite extended as Nick goes to the edge of the stage after the song has ended, whispering to the crowd to continue the refrain.

Then comes my favourite part of the night.
The sun has set at this point, although it's still dusk.
Shattered Ground begins. I fucking love this song man. Those synths that come in around 35 seconds in are so beautiful, combined with Nick's voice, which on this track on particular sounds imbued with a tonne of emotion.
Having just been through, and still moving through, my first-ever breakup, with someone I thought I'd be with forever, some of these lyrics really hit me.
I started crying, and then even more as they played my favourite song from Ghosteen, the incredibly evocative, wondrous, beautiful, heartwarming Galleon Ship. Fucking hell, man.
I think Shattered Ground / Galleon Ship is up there with the best one-two punches I've ever seen at a concert.
I spent a bit of the concert in my head, noticing I'm in my head, beating myself up for being in my head, comparing myself to others, part of me wanting to go home because there I can distract myself and not run the risk of ruining my own night.
But during this 10 or so minutes, I was able to cry freely and feel the music and the lyrics and the beauty of the place and the moment and hold the parts of me that were freaking out a bit. Such a beautiful moment. Thank you Nick, Warren, and band :heart:

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Leviathan and Balcony Man close out the main set. The latter was so fucking good. Nick by this point has been very thankful and grateful to the crowd, it is evident that he genuinely really appreciates the support and to be able to play music in Australia again after so long (even if he doesn't call this place home anymore). Also lovely to see him acknowledge the sacredness of Hanging Rock. Anyway, he does a preamble before Balcony Man, about how at some point in the tour, the crowd started screaming every time he sung the word "balcony", and how he loved it and wanted it to continue. So you have this song start up, which for the first third is actually quite desolate and despairing, and every time he sings "balcony" the lights go up and the crowd woooos. If any moment from the night could capture the majesty of this concert in isolation, it's that: they're playing this quite weighty song, which alternates between desolate and really beautiful and pretty, and Nick's at the piano just having the fucking time of his life encouraging the crowd to scream and cheer, over-enunciating the "I'm 200 pounds of packed ice/octopus/bag of blood and bone" as if he's winking to the fact that the lines are a bit ridiculous. Such a treat.

They've already been playing 90 minutes, and then they come back out for an encore. Nick whips out a joke at the top, something about the next song being really, really long. It was Hollywood, and it was epic. I think it's the only song on Ghosteen with anything remotely approaching drums, and it ruled. The drummer, Larry Mullins (ha), who is a touring member of TBS, did a great job, and the part of the song where it kinda freaks out and the bass just rips was sick, and then the Kisa Gotami and the Mustard Seed part was magical, particularly with that amazing "it's a long way to find / peace of mind" refrain.

The set then loosened up, they played Henry Lee, with one of the backup singers taking PJ Harvey's part (another song I'm listening to for the first time right now), the Gen Xers and somewhat older started losing it around this point (but credit to them, they'd loved the whole night, they were just also loving hearing a few old classics), then Weeping Song, which, listening to now, was much better live. Then the piano version of Jubilee Street, any opportunity to hear it or Higgs Boson Blues is most welcomed, then Into My Arms, and then the night closed out with Ghosteen Speaks.

It was a magical evening, and then I took off for the bus, waited 45 mins in line, got on, got dropped off, made my way to my car and then drove home. Special evening. :heart::heart::heart:

The only thing that soured my experience was looking up the setlist from the night before, and seeing that they got the exact same set, AND they played Albuquerque, which is my favourite song off CARNAGE :sad:
 
[QUOTE} AND they played Albuquerque, which is my favourite song off CARNAGE :sad:

But why won't he come to Albuquerque?? :sad:

Wonderful write-up. So glad you got to see him. I have been following the Australia leg via a few friends who also got to see this tour. I hope he comes back to the US. I had tickets for not one but two shows before the pandemic, but was not able to make either of them which was heartbreaking. The show I saw in 2017 remains one of my favorite shows ever.
 
For anyone who has remotely enjoyed the last couple Nick Cave records, I cannot recommend Australian Carnage, the live album from that tour, more highly. Amazing.

Looking forward to seeing him solo later this month in LA!
 
For anyone who has remotely enjoyed the last couple Nick Cave records, I cannot recommend Australian Carnage, the live album from that tour, more highly. Amazing.

I was at that show and it was astonishing. Basing a concert around the Ghosteen album was very brave. That album is as dark as fcuk and translating to a live setting like he and Warren did was incredible. Very few artists can do this. Throw in songs from his back catalogue and it’s just supreme.
 
Well, well, well. The bitch, bitch, bitch is back.

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds are releasing their 18th studio album, Wild God, in August. It has a shit cover, a tracklist and a single, the title track.

File:Nick_Cave_and_the_Bad_Seeds_-_Wild_God.png


Nick's thoughts: “I hope the album has the effect on listeners that it’s had on me. It bursts out of the speaker, and I get swept up with it. It’s a complicated record, but it’s also deeply and joyously infectious. There is never a masterplan when we make a record. The records rather reflect back the emotional state of the writers and musicians who played them. Listening to this, I don’t know, it seems we’re happy. Wild God… there’s no fucking around with this record. When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves you. I love that about it."

1. Song of the Lake
2. Wild God
3. Frogs
4. Joy
5. Final Rescue Attempt
6. Conversion
7. Cinnamon Horses
8. Long Dark Night
9. O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)
10. As the Waters Cover the Sea

The PR folks: "Across ten tracks, the band dance between convention and experimentation, taking left-turns and detours that heighten the rich imagery and emotion in Cave’s soul-stirring narratives. It is the sound of a group emboldened by reconnection and taking flight. There are moments that touch fondly upon the Bad Seeds’ past but they are fleeting, and serve only to imbue the relentless and restless forward motion of the band."

The title track certainly fits this description.

 
What are my thoughts, you ask? I'm so glad you did.

I would describe myself as cautiously excited and happily somewhat slightly concerned. I've seen a lot of comments on social media from fans froffing at the fucking mouth about this track because it's drums and doesn't sound like the last three records. Which makes me quite angry, because I think the last three records are all absolute masterpieces, to be quite honest. So there's a part of me that's a little reticent, and hoping they haven't just made a reactionary record to assuage those people. I like Wild God, but I don't love it right now, and am not yet sold on the self-referential stuff, part of me goes... you're just singing "rape and pillage" and "Jubilee Street" to piss in these stupid rich fans' pockets. But then again... I love it when Dan Bejar goes self-referential so why can't Nick Cave do it. And there's a bit of the tongue-in-cheek bigness of some of the Carnage tracks in this song, which was a record and live show that I absolutely loved.
 
Personally, I think it's a pretty great song and I find it intriguing it's the second track of the album. Sounds more like a tour de force you expect about 3/4 through an album.
 
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