Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds announce new album due out next year

By Mikael Wood

Nov. 27, 2012 2:33 PM PT

With screenwriting and film-scoring credits on “Lawless” and “West of Memphis,” respectively, Nick Cave has spent much of 2012 focusing on his career in movies.

Next year, though, the Australian polymath will return to rock with a new studio album by his longtime band, the Bad Seeds. “Push the Sky Away” is due out in the U.S. on Feb. 19, according to a press release; it’s the first disc from the Bad Seeds -- which at the moment also features bassist Martyn Casey, drummer Thomas Wydler, percussionist Jim Sclavunos, singer Conway Savage and multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis -- since 2008’s “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!” and follows a 2010 set by Cave’s other deranged art-punk group, Grinderman.

“If I were to use that threadbare metaphor of albums being like children,” Cave said in the statement, “then ‘Push the Sky Away’ is the ghost-baby in the incubator and Warren’s loops are its tiny, trembling heartbeat.”

The group recorded the nine-track record in the south of France with producer Nick Launay, who’s worked on most of Cave’s recent output. Song titles include “Mermaids,” “We Real Cool” and the especially promising “Higgs Boson Blues.”

“We No Who U R,” the album’s lead cut, will be available as a single on iTunes beginning Dec. 3. Watch a trailer with footage from the studio below.