Album Of The Week: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Push The Sky Away

Even when he was a fresh-faced punk, Nick Cave never sounded like a fresh-faced punk. Back on those Birthday Party records, he sounded like a wizened, apocalyptic rage-prophet. And over the course of god knows how many albums since then, he's only grown into that voice. Cave's records might not have the same world-blasted intensity that they once did, but he's one of our most reliable sources of dark and bloody-minded religious-death imagery. It's easy to say that Cave's two albums with the cantankerous noise-garage side project Grinderman brought him back to the hate-stare evilness that had once animated him. But if you take a long, hard look at Cave's discography, it's shockingly low on weak points. His intensity may have waxed and waned over the years, but the fundamental power of his music has been surprisingly steady for decades now. And so Push The Sky Away, Cave's new one with the Bad Seeds, is merely one more very good album in a long, long string of them.