Who is on the album cover for Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ ‘Push the Sky Away’?
Of all the covers from their 18 studio albums to date, there is no artwork as striking as the one chosen for Push The Sky Away, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ 2013 record. Their fifteenth release and their first after a five-year break marked a change for the band—or, as reflected by the image, some light being allowed into their typically dark room.
The band’s progress can be somewhat tracked through their album artwork. It’s clear that Cave cares a lot about his music having a matching visual identity, carefully selecting the striking image for the front of Let Love In or the more simplistic design of Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus. Like all great album covers should, Cave’s imagery reflects what’s within. After all, he wanted to be a painter in the first place.
For The Boatman’s Call, an album that signalled a huge switch to more introspective lyricism and a more stripped-back sound, the black and white photo of Nick Cave standing solo feels like the perfect choice. In 2013, when it came to packaging Push The Sky Away, the chosen photo was a perfect fit, too.
This record once again signified a switch in momentum. Following 2008’s Dig, Lazarus Dig!!!, Push The Sky Away feels like the moment Nick Cave, as we know him now, began to take shape. Tracks like ‘Jubilee Street’ and ‘Higgs Boson Blues’ are long, wordy considerations of a topic, more like poems than anything else, as they reflect Cave’s unique approach to songwriting. It’s an album full of storytelling and tension, but now in a very different form than it used to emerge. It’s less violent, less punk-fueled. It’s more mature, and the cover, looking like a piece of art that would sit in a gallery, reflects that.
Shot by a friend of Cave’s, Dominique Issermann, the story of the album’s cover is also part of the reason why it was selected. “Dominique’s photo is an uncanny and haunting work, born of a happy accident and full of contradictions,” Cave said of the image, but the description could also fit the music—exultant yet mystical.
The photo also reflected an artwork that Cave associated with the record, Masaccio’s fresco, ‘Expulsion from the Garden of Eden’. “I thought it would make a great cover for Push the Sky Away, as it felt in keeping with many of the record’s concerns,” he explained, connecting the album’s themes to that of the Old Testament story.
But who is the figure on the cover?
Stood next to Cave in his signature suit on the album’s cover is an unclothed figure, looking like a ghostly apparition in the stark, light room. That figure is his wife, model and designer, Susie Cave.
The shoot taking place was actually not for Cave at all but for Susie and Issermann. “Dominique asked me to go to the bedroom window and open the shutters to let the sunlight in. Susie was changing for the next shot and was naked under her robe and, in a purely improvised act of subversion, dropped the robe as I opened the shutters,” Cave recalled. Calling his friend “the most fast-thinking and attentive photographer”, Isserman got the shot on the spur of the moment. Later, when looking through the images and stumbling across this one, Cave knew it was the perfect cover for the release.
However, this was not Susie Cave’s first time gracing an album cover. Formerly known as Susie Bick, she’s the gothic figure on the front of The Damned’s Phantasmagoria and the glamorous woman on the artwork for The Best Of Roxy Music. In short, that makes her a pretty good omen for great music.
