Critic Score
Based on 47 reviews
2013 Ratings: #28 / 1115
Year End Rank: #20
User Score
Based on 667 ratings
2013 Rank: #64
Liked by 72 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
Entertainment Weekly

The peak of Cave’s 15th album with the Bad Seeds is a multidimensional walkabout through sonic shadows and fog called ”Higgs Boson Blues,” which features references to both Miley Cyrus and Robert Johnson.

100
Time Out London
This is astoundingly powerful and singular storytelling, scored with devilish subtlety, unfolding with the grotesque modern detail and mythic scope of a Grayson Perry tapestry.
100
The Skinny

Perhaps this work is better summed up in a more classic manner on the elegiac title track. ‘Some people say it’s just rock ‘n’ roll, ah but it gets you right down to your soul.’ Amen.

100
The Independent
These are big themes, dealt with imaginatively by a singer and a band both operating at the peak of their powers. Album of the year?
95
The Line of Best Fit

Experimental yet built on superb songwriting, fresh and surprising but still somehow recognisably a Bad Seeds record, the amount of innovation and inspiration found on Push The Sky Away proves that Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds must still care an awful lot about this rock ‘n’ roll stuff.

90
Uncut

As by his own admission he’s more of a voyeuristic, narrative songwriter than an emotional miner: here, the music fills in the unwritten emotional content lurking behind his observations.

90
Clash

Potent in its masculine restraint, this record has surely always existed, just waiting to be plucked from the surf; a mercurial, magisterial, stick of seaside rock.

90
Loud and Quiet

They still sound as vital, charged, atmospheric and bursting with forward momentum as they did in 1983.

90
FasterLouder

Straight to your heart and to your gut, Push The Sky Away hits like a gentle kiss: life, love, loss. It’s a masterwork by an artist whose horizon feels a long, long way off.

90
Slant Magazine

Unlike most of his peers, Cave appears to show no sign of settling comfortably into the rock firmament, or, indeed, of compromising at all.

90
American Songwriter

For an album so ballad-heavy, there’s a great sense of turmoil and menace bubbling up just underneath the surface.

90
God Is in the TV

A couple of years on from the more demented, upbeat Dig Lazarus Dig!!!, Nick Cave returns as an old master. His themes remain, the delivery constant, but the sensitivity of The Bad Seeds is now at an exquisite, delicate place.

90
Consequence of Sound

Richly arranged, masterfully sequenced, and full of brooding, Push the Sky Away combines the stately beauty of The Boatman’s Call and No More Shall We Part with the intensity of Grinderman/Lazarus-era Cave while managing to sound like neither.

90
Tiny Mix Tapes
Warren Ellis’ contributions past the violin are quite welcome here and the kind of delivery with which Cave matches the low-end, heavy sounds complement each other incredibly well. And when Cave does yell, when he enters briefly into that fire sermon outfit, it shows that he’s still capable, yet restraining for the sake of dynamic.
90
Classic Rock
Not only have the Bad Seeds delivered another healthy baby, but perhaps the most gracefully beautiful of the whole brood.
90
Louder Than War
Sometimes it seems like every member is a master arranger in their own right and add to the devotional beauty of the songs and the sense of yearning and heart aching space whilst breaking out beyond the guitar, bass and drums rut of normal rock n roll and creating a strange and intersting sound that adds to whole spectral film track sense of space and longing of the album.
90
NME

What Cave and co have managed here is no mean feat: a masterpiece that merges the experimentation and freedom of their side projects with Cave’s most tender songcraft.

84
Paste

The album surprises continually, offering humor, crises and redemption within the sound of something as lovely and enticing as it is aggressive and challenging.

80
NOW Magazine

Sky’s post-post-punk mellowing proves a welcome development, revealing maturity instead of postured snarling.

80
Evening Standard
The music may be quieter than usual but Cave’s genius rings loud and clear.
80
Pitchfork

Where the Bad Seeds' mellow records usually find Cave in pensive, piano-man mode, Push the Sky Away presents an uncharacteristically weightless, eerily atmospheric sound

80
Mojo
What you may lose in rock'n'roll kicks you gain in poignancy and poetry.
80
The Observer
This is a very good record indeed, just not the record the more hidebound Cave lifer would instantly press to their breast.
80
Record Collector
Across the album as a whole he works towards a sort of mid-world territory, between air and water, dream and reality.
80
The Arts Desk
It’s a tough call to turn Brighton’s prosaic stick-of-rock reality into heart of darkness territory but Cave pulls it off.
80
The Sydney Morning Herald

It's through the anguished mutter of Finishing Jubilee Street and the title track that Cave's big book of revelation draws us ever inward.

80
GIGsoup
Although this album gives us the same piano man persona we have seen before it feels more knowing, more weightless and eerie.
80
The Telegraph

Freighted deep with lugubrious rolls of oily bass, sandy inhalations of desert strings, holy intonations and salty lust, Push the Sky Away is the audio equivalent of bathing in the Dead Sea.

80
FACT Magazine

It might be their fifteenth album in a 30 -year career, but Push The Sky Away proves beyond all doubt – even mine – that the group is still at the top of their game.

80
Under the Radar

While nearly unshakeable in its bleakness, Push the Sky Away is another exemplary effort from the Bad Seeds, and the moodiest entry into the Nick Cave canon in over a decade.

80
musicOMH

On the first couple of listens, it may all seem a bit underwhelming, a bit too sombre for its own good. Yet, slowly but surely, the magisterial atmosphere soon gets under the skin.

80
The Guardian

There aren't the guitar storms of a Mercy Seat or Do You Love Me? but Jubilee Street – a beguiling tale of brothels and hypocrisy – could quietly become another Seeds classic.

80
No Ripcord

We know better than to call Push The Sky Away Nick Cave’s best album, but if you want a portrait of the artist, as an artist, the album qualifies as “essential” even by the strictest definition.

80
SPIN

As always, just beyond Cave’s solemnity, there’s wicked and lovely fun to be had.

78
Beats Per Minute

Push the Sky Away is as wonderfully subdued as anything they’ve ever done, and there’s currently no group that can wring more value from their age and experience. 

70
Drowned in Sound

Cave’s schtick these days is less demonic preacher, more old guy railing self-mockingly against the dying of the light; but he feels a way away from perfecting that shtick without Grinderman to hide behind. 

70
Exclaim!

At a time when arty escapism too often descends into cheap distraction, Push the Sky Away is a vital and refreshingly sinister soundtrack to the daily grind of downbeat Bad Seeds listeners.

70
DIY

Tere are some wonderful moments, the single ('We No Who U R') and the title track are starkly magnificent, but the general feel is a bit of a comedown.

70
The 405

Whilst this isn’t a record which will entice or honey-trap a new audience, it is a piece which has a genuine brand of intelligence and depth that you’ll struggle to find on many releases this year.

70
AllMusic
Despite excellent songs, this album feels more like an extension of Cave and Ellis' cinematic work than a classic Bad Seeds record. The sonic sea change is deliberate; but historically, given their vastly musical nature, this more economical approach is jarring, though seductive.
70
PopMatters

Push the Sky Away might be prettier overall than his other recent albums, but it has a lot of menace in it. 

67
A.V. Club

The disc might not need Mick Harvey to season it—but it needs someone, or something, to heat up what amounts to a package of Cave cold cuts.

65
Spectrum Culture
Cave has made such great records that it’s more than a little disappointing to find him deliver one that’s merely good
60
Q Magazine

Words are what sustain Push The Sky Away.

60
Rolling Stone

The first Seeds LP without co-founder Mick Harvey, Sky is full of tiny sounds – plinking guitars, pulsing bass, lazy subtle drums.

50
The Needle Drop

I won't say Push The Sky Away is Nick Cave's darkest album yet, but it's easily one of his most depressing--so much so that Cave himself seems too shaken to engage his listeners with the same emotional potency he usually does.

WhatTheFunk
82

ARTIST BINGE #1: NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS, PART. 15

"And some people say it's just rock and roll
Ah but it gets you right down to your soul
You've got to just keep on pushing it
Keep on pushing it
Push the sky away"

A fifteenth studio album. A career with virtually no missteps. A charismatic leader. An extraordinary singer-songwriter and a showman inhabited by an insane energy... Nick Cave, accompanied by his legendary Bad Seeds, came back in 2013 with "Push The Sky ... read more

RakkSmells
80

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds divert from their more rock-fueled venture Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!! and deliver one of their most somber and haunting albums in quite a while. Push The Sky Away proves that even 15 albums into their discography, they're still able to further innovate their sound and in turn still make an incredibly solid and beautifully produced album in the process. The instrumentation's usage of pianos, light guitars, strings and even synths in some instances I think really help back ... read more

JayCrackers
90

I have come to terms that depressed Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds is my favorite kind of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and although I love all their projects, something about Push the Sky Away, Boatman's Call and Skeleton Tree and their 2019 Ghosteen always have me coming back.

Track Review

We No Who U R 10/10
Wide Lovely Eyes 9.5/10
Water's Edge 8.5/10.
Jubilee Street 10/10
Mermaids 8.5/10.
We Real Cool 8/10
Finishing Jubilee Street 8/10
Higgs Boson Blues 9/10
Push The Sky Away ... read more

81

I like this album

SnowstormJones
90

A close runner up to my favourite Nick Cave outing, and my second overall, Push brings to mind a single word to describe its atmosphere for better or worse; Purgatory. From the nearly monochrome cover and the sketches of overcast Brighton littered throughout the record, there’s a real drabness going on here that some people could find a bit unimpressive considering the switch up from the last decade of his music. This isn’t rock music, or at least, not all of it.

What makes this ... read more

EliSL
85

A very good album. Since the new album is coming out soon, and the new single is very good, I figured that I should listen to some more Nick Cave. My dad mentioned the song Jubilee Street, so I decided to listen to this album. Overall a nice album.

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Added on: November 27, 2012