NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEES

SUB-ATOMIC ROCK

Nick Cave drops some dark science with his newly configured Bad Seeds

By Matt Ashare | 
Posted February 20, 2013

The Higgs boson, known to some inflammatory pseudo-scientists as "the God particle," is the one sub-atomic piece of the universal puzzle that kinda sorta explains gravity, and unequivocally accounts for the existence of the ginormous Large Hedron Collider, a facility that a whole bunch of European countries spent a whole bunch of money to build on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. Phew. . . That's a mouthful. Actually, over the weekend, for the better part of an hour, I listened to a physicist on NPR explain the elusive boson in the wake of recent experiments that may or may not have actually generated a handful of them at the LHC, and I'm still not entirely clear about, well, much of anything. Apparently, the Higgs particle may or may not exist, gravity may or may not have some relationship to its theoretical existence, and this chair I'm sitting in may or may not be a washing machine. I'm cool with that.

       The "Higgs Boson Blues," known to at least one confabulatory music fan as "the catchiest song" on the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album Push the Sky Away, is possibly the catchiest song on the new album by Nick Cave and the latest configuration of his longtime band the Bad Seeds. It absolutely has a certain gravity, in the sense that it is weighty, although, in keeping with Einstein's theory of relativity, there's no objective way to measure its theoretical heaviness.

       Like the rest of Push the Sky Away, "Higgs Boson Blues" was recorded at La Fabrique, a studio that almost has to be in France, which means it can't be that far from Switzerland. And, after spending what amounted to at least an hour with the song over the weekend, I'm still not entirely clear exactly what it's about, even though I have a pretty good idea what Cave's getting at when he pleads, dramatically, "Bury me in my favorite yellow patent leather shoes." And, I'm cool with that too.

       At this point, it's probably worth noting that Cave, an Australian-born, post-punk freak with a deep, dark goth streak, got his start fronting the art-damaged, noise-battered Birthday Party in the late-'70s. He formed the Bad Seeds a full three decades ago, after relocating to England with fellow Birthday Partier Mick Harvey, and joining forces with German avant-guitarist Blixa Bargeld, leader of the notorious renegade industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten (try spelling that three times fast). In other words, Cave's been around the rock block more than a couple of times even if you don't happen to be familiar with his repertoire, which is just another way of saying that he's really huge in Europe, not quite as mammoth as the Large Hedron Collider, and possibly even bigger in Japan.

       That said, Push the Sky Away is only the 15th album he's made with the Bad Seeds, owing, in part, to the fact that he's done a whole lot of other stuff. Like, for example, scoring films, writing novels, and acting in films and on stage. Oh, and in 2007, he also found the energy to form a rather Bad Seedy side-project called Grinderman, featuring mulit-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, basset Martyn Casey, and percussionist Jim Sclavunos.

       That final factoid wouldn't be particularly relevant if it didn't offer a convenient bridge back to Push the Sky Away, the first Bad Seeds album to feature Cave as the last man standing from the original band. Bargeld packed it in a full decade ago. And Harvey finally called it quits in 2009, shortly after the band released their 14th studio album, the raucously decadent descent into finely cultivated garage blooze that was Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (At last, the critics agreed, an album title with not one, not two, but six exclamation points!!!!!! LOL:—)

       What's left of the Bad Seeds on the new album looks suspiciously like Grinderman, with Ellis, a masterful minimalist, playing the part of mad sonic scientist, applying a radical reductionist theory of anti-rock to Cave's penchant for reveling in dark matter. Casey and Sclavunos are on board too, acting as something along the lines of a severely deconstructed, at times almost entirely absent rhythm section. Aside from the two women who sing ethereal harmonies on several tracks, and the harmonizing members of the Children of the Ecole Saint Martin choir who grace the disc's devastatingly solemn title track, it's kinda hard to tell whether the other credited players made the final cut. I mean, I do believe, as the liner notes indicate, that some dude named Ryan Porter brought a trombone into the studio. It's just not all that easy to tell which tune he might have played on.

          Fortunately, Cave's a guy who's not short on personality. So filling all the empty space left by Ellis' austere arrangements is not a problem. A fractal trip-hoppish groove and the ambient echo of a few synth chords are all that frame Cave's world weary vocals on the languid opening track, a menacing reflection on nature's ambivalence called "We No Who U R." And, Cave basically talks his way through "Water's Edge," a taut meditation on the maddeningly fleeting nature of young love framed by little more than the incessant thrum of a sinewy bass line, some spare percussion, and astrally projected string embellishments. "The will of love/The thrill of love/But the chill of love, is coming on," Cave muses with tender disgust, after watching the city girls "take apart their bodies like toys for the local boys."

       The less is more aesthetic of Push the Sky Away suits Cave, who pulls off a pitch perfect impression of Nick Cave imagining Nick Cave a decade or so ago. So, yes, there are ways in which his delivery resembles the deadpan demeanor of Lou Reed the elder, or, better yet, the stark spiritual yearning of Leonard Cohen. But Cave's pretty singular in his vocal stylings, which amount to a sardonic spin on some mythical Southern Baptist preacherman testifying about the coming Rapture at the unholy crossroads. "I am beyond recriminations," he spits into the hollow void of "Jubilee Street," "I'm glowing. . . I'm flying," until, at last, churning guitar chords crash in around him.

       More often than not, Cave seems to begin songs as if he were in the middle of a thought, and then proceed in stream-of-consciousness fashion. It's a strategy that works well with Ellis's diffuse sonic palette. "I'd just finished writing 'Jubilee Street,'" he informs the gathered congregants at the start of "Finishing Jubilee Street," a song about a song that's actually on the album, "I lay down on my bed and fell into a deep sleep. . ." And, on "Higgs Boson Blues," he manages to rhyme Hannah Montana with "African savanna," name-check the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, and find Miley Cyrus "floating in a swimming pool," all without skipping a beat or breaking the the unsettling spell cast by the song's portentous ruminations on the future.

       Ultimately, Cave trades in broken beauty on what's arguably one his most beautifully broken albums as a Bad Seed. "I got a feeling I can't shake/I got a feeling that just won't go away," he intones at the start of the disc's final track, a painful prayer about the power of endurance that ends on a somewhat romantic note. "Some people say it's just rock and roll," Cave admits. "Ah, but it gets you right down to your soul. . ."  

       When you get past Cave's poetry slamming — when you arrive somewhere in the vicinity of his soul — the real message of Push the Sky Away is rather simple: Reality may sorta suck some of the time, but mortality really bites. It's not exactly a major revelation. But in an age when science continues, even in the face of diminishing returns, to find ways for us mortals to cheat death, it's probably worth pondering. It may even be worth a few more Bad Seeds albums from Cave.