WITH Grinderman defunct, it seems Nick Cave has abandoned Goth grit and histrionics in favour of a reflective, often spiritual approach.

Perhaps it’s down to the acres of empty space left by departed Bad Seeds guitarist Mick Harvey; maybe it comes from a more chilled life in Brighton. Indeed the album bristles with references to the city; from its cover, shot in his Kemptown bedroom, to Wide Lovely Eyes; a bleak account of a faded seaside resort.

There are boys on the shingle beach flirting with ‘silly’ city girls and Jubilee Street, an unprepossessing part of the Laines. This is a brooding, single-paced soliloquy lifted solely by swooping dynamics, courtesy of Harvey’s replacement Warren Ellis; an introspective, often sinister offering where Cave in turn plays seedy voyeur, doom merchant and shamefaced red-light district punter.

Opener We No Who U R sets the tone, combining lyrical menace with unbridled melodic beauty – “We know who you are and we know where you live.” Wide Lovely Eyes breaks your heart, Mermaid swims with mysticism while the dark, stark eight-minutes of Higgs Boson Blues dwells on disease-carrying missionaries and, of course, the devil.

At the end of this melancholic wallow through the often dark recesses of Cave’s head, he finally admits light in at the end of his tunnel by urging us to look up at “the sun, the sun, the sun”.

Listening to Push The Sky Away is like being an intruder at a confessional; disturbing, compelling and uplifting in almost equal measures.