![]() Though this is now relatively established as Cave has gone from beloved cult figure to more widely acclaimed icon in these past 10 years, his career was always absurdly consistent - there are no prolonged downturns in the quality of his output, with masterpieces littered through the decades more or less evenly and only a few noticeably weaker albums between them. Given, the Bad Seeds had already just undergone a different kind of revitalization. In hindsight, Push The Sky Away was a new beginning. Those lyrics, and Cave’s performances of them, ended up becoming a dividing line between the Nick Cave of the past and the Nick Cave with one of the richest, most surprising, latter age acts in pop history. There are those among us who have come to believe it’s arguably Cave’s finest song. Any barely contained ecstasy or fury on the recording is let loose entirely - a full exorcism, a full resurrection. ![]() Live, it escalates, erupts, Cave running down the stage screaming that refrain over and over. In all the time since Push The Sky Away first arrived - 10 years ago this Saturday - “Jubilee Street” has taken on a sort of mystical power within the Cave canon. If translation is to be trusted, Cave once told the German publication Musikexpress that the song could be interpreted as a tale of “transcendence through humiliation,” but also acknowledged that it, like perhaps almost all of his songs, could be viewed as a meditation on the act of creation. He repeats the last bit just once, then the song is carried away on celestial waves of background vocals and strings. “I’m transforming, I’m vibrating/ I’m glowing, I’m flying/ Look at me now.” Nick Cave intones those words, controlled but just slightly quavering with intensity and release, at the end of the long strange journey in “Jubilee Street,” one of two existential epics that defined the Bad Seeds’ fifteenth outing, Push The Sky Away.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |