While describing the group’s new album as “very, very beautiful”, Nick Cave has also christened Push
the Sky Away “the ghost-baby in the incubator”, saying that he “gets all goose-pimply just talking
about it”. His seemingly incongruous description is certainly apt to sum up the first single, ‘We No
Who U R’.

While the echoing, frostily hued chords and Cave’s velvety vocals are certainly beautiful, the calmly
chanted lyrics – “We know who you are/ and we know where you live/ And we know there’s no
need to forgive” – and eerie woodwind and strings certainly lend the track a chilling and haunted air.

It proceeds at a menacingly restrained pace, never picking up tempo or swelling to a crescendo,
painting a rather disparate soundscape. Goose-pimple inducing stuff, and an intriguing introduction
to the new album, due for release in February 2013.

Wispy and desolate, ‘We No Who U R’ offers a tantalisingly cagey impression of the
Bad Seeds’ forthcoming record Push the Sky Away – a concept album about the age
of the internet.

If this is music for the Millenial Generation, perhaps what Cave and co. have
here reworked their gothic overtones into is a soundtrack to the shadowy lives of
swivelchair-ridden web stalkers worldwide.

Menace omniscient yet immobile, that is. “We know who you are, and we know where
you live” they chant; their laptops outputting quivering guitars which never take off
and frustrated, non-progressive loops which hang about the air ominously.

A deft and understated sample of interesting things to come.

‘We No Who U R’ is the lead single from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds upcoming studio album Push
the Sky Away.

As the track plays, in my head I picture an old dusty leather jewellery box. I pick it up and I open it.
Delicate music pours out and I see a miniature Nick Cave spinning hypnotically in the centre of an
otherwise empty box. For there are no rings, necklaces or broaches here as it is Cave himself who is
the real Jewel. His voice is powerful, yet underplayed and his lyrics are cut as sharp as any diamond.

Nick Cave along with his Bad Seeds have always tried to fight off musical stagnation. Although this
track’s musical arrangement is minimal, it says nothing for what the rest of the album could be like.
So If we survive the approaching Mayan Meltdown then you can put down your crossbow, emerge
happily from your home made anti-apocalypse shelter and look forward to hearing the full album in
2013.