Singer/songwriter Nick Cave and his backing group The Bad Seeds jumped out of the Eighties post-punk scene as Bob Dylan’s Gothic doppelganger, and have since enjoyed critical respect and a cult following to this, their twentieth year of existence.   

So for such an esteemed musician, why the hell does Nick Cave seem to have Ke$ha’s grasp of grammar?  On the Bad Seeds’ fifteenth studio album, “Push The Sky Away,” there are track titles that would make English professors angrily fling coffee cups with Nolan Ryan force, especially the first track (and first single) “We No Who U R.”

Questionable English aside, while intriguing, this is clearly not a piece of work for the non-adventurous, and even then it doesn’t quite reveal itself on the first listen.

For a start, it doesn’t even feel like music. Musical arrangements are sparse, and seem more like an accent to Cave’s strange and cryptic musings, which range from mermaid fantasies and visions of beaches, to dark tales of a prostitute’s struggles and murders by the water.

There is even a song shouting out the higgs boson, aka the God particle, and one that references Miley Cyrus.

I wasn’t getting it at first, and in some ways I still don’t. But the album’s vibes kept me coming back for more, my favorite out of these being the dread filled “Water’s Edge.”

Cave’s lyrics are delightfully imagistic, even if you can’t sing along to them, and give listeners bold pictures to draw in their minds, and the musical backing is well done even if it is simple.  

“Push The Sky Away” is definitely a strange album, but a good one. And if you do listen and like it, you could go hear Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds live when they come for South By Southwest.