You saw that one coming, didn't ya. There are a few bands that I get excited over every new release and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds is one of 'em. Push the Sky Away is their fifteenth and newest studio album (their first, From Her to Eternity, dates back to 1984) and its a slow-moving, strolling through life's quieter back alleys with a swagger and a song kinda record. I recently had a mini-Birthday Party LP party and while I certainly miss those badder-ass'd days, much as I miss miss Polly Jean Harvey's harder side, I can get into Push the Sky Away and its quieter more sullen songs largely because that makes sense with time. After all, we can't all be Mick and Keith still filled with jump and flash, can we.

Nick Cave seems to need a foil to his vulture crooner poète maudit persona and after Blixa Bargeld left that post, Warren Ellis slid in to fill his void but Warren does so much more subtly as compared to Blixa (which almost goes without saying) adding haunting strings somewhere off in the distance. The songs here are mostly spoken as opposed to being sung as if Nick has important things to tell us, offering up a soundtrack with voice-over to some sad-sounding flicker of fate. I don't know about you, but I'm buyin' the whole slow simmering burn hook, line, and swagger.

"...if I were to use that threadbare metaphor of albums being like children, then Push The Sky Away is the ghost-baby in the incubator and Warren's loops are its tiny, trembling heart-beat." So said Nick Cave.

You can download Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Push the Sky Away in CD-quality FLAC or WAV format from Bleep.com and you can order the LP right here.