Part four of my exploration of music and memory covers 2013, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seed’s ‘Push the Sky Away’. This album marked a transformation in the Bad Seed’s sounds, as Cave’s collaboration with Warren Ellis began a journey into strange, ethereal and atmospheric places – a journey that has culminated in this year’s wonderful ‘Ghosteen’.
In 2013, We were settling into life in Folkestone, or attempting to at least. After an exciting first year working at Cognitive, I had been promoted, but tasked with steering a set of projects where we had over-stretched our capabilities by a staggering margin.
Creatively it was a fun and frantic year spent building sets and filming puppets, but the pressure was at times unbearable and the weeks were long. I spent much of this time in the Old Post Office on Tontine Street, working with some friends with whom I had collaborated before. It was here that I first heard ‘Jubilee Street’ on BBC Radio 6 music, and the crawling guitar line, filled with an ominous menace, grabbed me in an instant.
Perhaps because of the difficult time it is associated with in my mind, I hadn’t listened to the album as a whole much since this time. Listening to it now as I sketched out this comic, I was struck by how much had stayed with me, and how many memories it stirred.
