Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away

[Kieran McConville]

My favourite Nick Cave audience interaction is the one on youtube somewhere where a heckler is shouting at him during Stagger Lee. He simply replies 'fuck you' without missing a beat.

 

[cobl04]

would like to hear people's take on this... https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-197/feature-anwyn-crawford/

I don't like this writer very much at all, she has also written terribly about U2 in the past, but I thought it was an interesting read. I don't really agree with it, though.

 

[LemonMelon]

I saw the word middlebrow and closed the tab.

Nick Cave is, at best, a theater act here in America. There's nothing middlebrow about his audience. And if this writer is attempting to describe his art instead of his position in popular culture, using "middlebrow" as a genre tag is patently idiotic. Citing From Her to Eternity as his creative apex was also worth a huge eyeroll.

Booooooooo

 

[bono_212]

If I hear the word "Middlebrow" one more time...

 

[iron yuppie]

I don't know if misogyny is a charge that can justifiably be made of Cave - no more so than, say, The Rolling Stones, as they are both mimicking to some extent a very old blues tradition that is suspicious of but not hateful toward women. I'd say Cave has some misanthropic tendencies, but those also extend to himself, especially on something like No More Shall We Part. Listen to something like Hallelujah, and it's hard not to be moved by the intensity and poetry of the introspection on display there. There's nothing middlebrow about that album, or The Boatman's Call, or Push the Sky Away: there's a genuine intellectualism there that is rarely found in such variety in any one artist.

 

[LemonMelon]

If I hear the word "Middlebrow" one more time...

If Australia just discovered it, you know it's on the way out.

 

[Kieran McConville]

would like to hear people's take on this... https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-197/feature-anwyn-crawford/

I don't like this writer very much at all, she has also written terribly about U2 in the past, but I thought it was an interesting read. I don't really agree with it, though.

Borderline unreadable, but the upshot seems to be; another column by someone about why you're bad for liking (insert thing you like here).

I can't stand the kind of literal-mindedness that seems to afflict some critics (though actually in places this author gives some indication of being at least aware of the role-playing/mask-donning nature of performance). It's as bad as the people who think Tarantino films actually are advocating you kill a bunch of people.

Loved the little dig about his 'consensual rape' lyric from a Grinderman album. Course he meant raping someone. Course he did. :eyeroll:

Now, admittedly, Cave's image down under has been gentrified a bit of late (really, since at least the turn of the century and No More Shall We Part) what with the exhibitions and magazine writeups and collections of the private papers and so forth; but he can't be blamed for his admirers. It's no skin off my nose if some readers of the Sydney Morning Herald weekend style magazine picked up his new album to play on the trip to the winery, running-dog capitalists though they may be. I think his actual self-presentation remains at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek, albeit the swagger is backed up with real talent.

I doubt that the duet with Kylie Minogue, not really his finest hour imo, and however calculated it may or may not have been, has that much bearing on his commercial career nearly twenty years later.

‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’ exemplified Cave’s ambiguous attitude to the music industry, and particularly to success in his home country. He accepted his 2007 induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame while maintaining a haughty contempt towards the honour; he dismisses song writing as ‘woman’s work’ while regularly expounding upon the elevating notion of his ‘muse’, who seems not to mind a chart success or two; and he has become determined during recent years to shape for himself, as he admitted frankly in his interview with Good Weekend, a legacy in the country that he left behind nearly thirty years ago.

This writer is astoundingly clueless. I obviously don't have a quote of Cave 'dismissing songwriting as woman's work', but I have read quite a few quotes about him wearing a suit to his office to, you know, song write. Maybe he was making an off the cuff crack? Maybe, maybe everything isn't to be taken literally?

 

[cobl04]

That's what annoyed me the most, yeah. This idea that everything has to be taken literally. Tom Waits never drove a nail through a woman's forehead. Songs like From Her to Eternity are so obviously an artistic work of fiction. Music and art are inhabited so richly by flawed characters, but if it were left to writers such the author of that article we'd be left with nothing but vapidity.

And yeah, middlebrow is literally the last word I'd choose to describe his music.

It probably speaks volumes that after I tweeted an open criticism to the author she immediately replied "I have no time or energy for Nick Cave fan boys. Bye" and blocked me.

 

[LemonMelon]

If she's too busy for an open conversation, she should keep her terrible opinions to herself.

 

[bono_212]

Wow, haha, what a joke.

Some people aren't really good at taking what they dish out, are they?

 

[Kieran McConville]

That's what annoyed me the most, yeah. This idea that everything has to be taken literally. Tom Waits never drove a nail through a woman's forehead. Songs like From Her to Eternity are so obviously an artistic work of fiction. Music and art are inhabited so richly by flawed characters, but if it were left to writers such the author of that article we'd be left with nothing but vapidity.

And yeah, middlebrow is literally the last word I'd choose to describe his music.

It probably speaks volumes that after I tweeted an open criticism to the author she immediately replied "I have no time or energy for Nick Cave fan boys. Bye" and blocked me.

You may have been a little late to the party; unless I totally misread something, the article appeared to date from 2009. Or maybe I did misread something.

If people like the author had their way, everything would be focus-grouped sludge sending an appropriate message to a docile, lobotomised audience. Look, I even agree a bit with her lamenting the rise of what is often lumped under the label 'neoliberalism'. Our society/economy in its present form is profoundly sick. Nick Cave is not the enemy in this picture.

I couldn't really understand her repeated allusions to his obviously extremely limited musical talent, as though such a thing were self-evident. I mean, make that argument if you want, but it isn't self-evident.

 

[cobl04]

Looks like the new album will continue in that brooding, ready-to-break-but-never-doing-so vein.

But with far more weight and heaviness, following what happened

 

[martha]

I'm almost hoping he doesn't tour. It would be too much.


Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference

 

[iron yuppie]

New song is deeply unsettling and deeply awesome.

 

[Kieran McConville]

It's brooding, alright. I'm a bit hesitant to speculate on what this means for the album (yeah, I mean, I hardly expect a chuckle-fest), but in and of itself it's a compelling piece.

 

[djerdap]

The album is out there.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Incidentally, doesn't this kind of put the lie to all that 'in this day and age nobody can possibly delay the gap between announcing and releasing more than a day or two' business? This album was announced like half a year ago.

 

[UnforgettableLemon]

"Jesus Alone" is harrowing and surreal. I'm excited to hear the album though I wonder how emotionally taxing it might be.


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[LemonMelon]

This album makes A Moon Shaped Pool sound like The Monkees.

 

[david]

It's on Apple Music now. It's pretty good.


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[LemonMelon]

I think it's about time to recognize this man as one of the best living songwriters, if we haven't already done so. How many albums does he have now, 16? About a dozen of those are great and his new ones continue to be great as he approaches 60. The consistency there is amazing.

 

[iron yuppie]

I'm really itching to hear the new one. For some reason my iTunes refuses to download the final track though.

 

[iron yuppie]

Skeleton Tree currently has a 99 on Metacritic.

 

[Lancemc]

It's good. Not sure I it's anywhere near one of my favorites of his though. I think, perhaps inescapably, people's reactions to the album are getting swept up in the story of its creation. Not that that's a bad thing but eh.

 

[david]

"I Need You" damn.


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[lazarus]

This album makes A Moon Shaped Pool sound like The Monkees.

Def pull quote for the end of the year poll.


Tho there's no way this places higher than AMSP.

 

[david]

It's Cave's "Blackstar".


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[Joey788]

The only word I can think of for this album is harrowing. I can't think of a song harder to listen to than "I Need You." Just devastating.

 

[iron yuppie]

I don't even know what to say about it after one listen except that it is mesmerizing, visceral, and ultimately beautiful in an incredibly powerful way.

He uses the steam-of-consciousness lyrical and vocal delivery to tremendous effect, even more so than on Push the Sky Away. Some of the instrumentation, like on Rings of Saturn I think, gives the feeling of a mind spinning, trying to cope with trauma, but there's something calming in the synths and languid melodies as well.

An incredibly brave album as well in acknowledging defeat in the search for meaning out of pain, much like Carrie & Lowell in that regard.

 

[iron yuppie]

"Soon the children will be rising, will be rising. This is not for our eyes."

God damn.