Semi-faux-mockumentary about the making of Nick Cave and The Bad Seed’s most conventional, mainstream and importantly most accessible album, 2013’s Push The Sky Away.
I think the best and most important thing this film does is capture the mysticism and myth of ‘Nick Cave’. You never quite know if he’s being serious, if the set up is a ‘bit’, if he’s being genuine: it keeps you guessing, keeps you wanting to peel back more layers to find out whether what he’s saying, acting, doing is true.
On one hand, it serves as a perfect entry point to become a fan, something I think he may well have been aware of creating this album: whilst still sticking to the essential core of what makes him that kind of songwriter. Whilst on the other it peels back a very intimate, never really before seen look on his process when making a record and how he thinks about his work and his past - something quite elusive to pre-existing fans.
When we are shown the define, real, bare bones stuff: mostly the recordings of songs from Push The Sky Away, it’s an interesting look at a master is at work, and how Warren Ellis helps reinvent and push Cave sonically.
It captured me back in 2014, and I’ve never looked back.
It’s a bit sad this is probably the last time we’ll ever get to see Blixa Bargald with Cave, in the public eye. And as a long time fan with the privilege of retrospective it’s very bitterly amusing to me Cave tries to lecture Bargeld on the power of editing, when it feels in his career since (especially sonically from Ellis) he needs to adhere to more.
Semi-faux-mockumentary about the making of Nick Cave and The Bad Seed’s most conventional, mainstream and importantly most accessible album, 2013’s Push The Sky Away.
I think the best and most important thing this film does is capture the mysticism and myth of ‘Nick Cave’. You never quite know if he’s being serious, if the set up is a ‘bit’, if he’s being genuine: it keeps you guessing, keeps you wanting to peel back more layers to find out whether what he’s saying, acting, doing is true.
On one hand, it serves as a perfect entry point to become a fan, something I think he may well have been aware of creating this album: whilst still sticking to the essential core of what makes him that kind of songwriter. Whilst on the other it peels back a very intimate, never really before seen look on his process when making a record and how he thinks about his work and his past - something quite elusive to pre-existing fans.
When we are shown the define, real, bare bones stuff: mostly the recordings of songs from Push The Sky Away, it’s an interesting look at a master is at work, and how Warren Ellis helps reinvent and push Cave sonically.
It captured me back in 2014, and I’ve never looked back.
It’s a bit sad this is probably the last time we’ll ever get to see Blixa Bargald with Cave, in the public eye. And as a long time fan with the privilege of retrospective it’s very bitterly amusing to me Cave tries to lecture Bargeld on the power of editing, when it feels in his career since (especially sonically from Ellis) he needs to adhere to more.
