Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Announce New Album

Following on from the dissolution of semi-side-project Grinderman, who announced on stage at Meredith last year that they’d be calling it a day, it was only a matter of time before Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds would get back to the more regular rhythm of crafting essential albums.

So it goes that in a media release overnight, one of Australia’s most important outfits announced they will be delivering their latest, and fifteenth, studio effort in February 2013.

Push The Sky Away is the first album from the group in five years, the follow-up to 2008’s Dig! Lazarus, Dig!!! and features the lineup of impresario Cave, multi-instrumentalist wizard Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn Casey, drummer Thomas Wydler, percussionist Jim Sclavunos, and vocalist Conway Savage.

With the ‘dirty old man’ schtick of Grinderman well and truly exorcised the return to the Bad Seeds fold comes with a more tempered, haunting sound across nine brand new compositions. Or as the legendary bandleader himself puts it: “”Well, 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,” says Cave.“I don’t know, this record just seems new, you know, but new in an old school kind of way” – Nick Cave

The media release states that Cave also jotted down inspirations in a traditional “modest notebook with shellac covers over the course of almost a year,” but also seeking sources from the world wide web, Googling ferociously, trawling Wikipedia entries “whether they’re true or not”.

Adding the songs of Push The Sky Away “convey how on the internet profoundly significant events, momentary fads, and mystically-tinged absurdities sit side-by-side and question how we might recognise and assign weight to what’s genuinely important.”

With the myth-making in place, the band decamped to La Fabrique, a 19th Century mansion in the south of France (of course), where “the walls of the main studio are lined with an immense collection of classical vinyl.”

English Producer and longtime collaborator Nick Launay once again took the helm behind the desk, and Cave notes that while he brings to the ideas “unformed and pupal”, it’s the Bad Seeds that galvanise them into the final finished aural experience. Praising his band, Cave says: “Ask anyone who has seen them at work. They are unlike any other band on earth for pure, instinctive inventiveness.”

“I don’t know, this record just seems new, you know, but new in an old school kind of way,” adds Cave.

Push The Sky Away is due for release on February 15th on all the usual formats, while lead single and opening track ‘We No Who U R’ will be available from December 3rd, and will also be available as a download with every preorder purchase from nickcave.com.au

You can view the artwork and tracklisting of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ 15th studio album below:

Tracklisting