Review: The Sick Bag Song

The Sick Bag Song by Nick Cave
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Roger Waters conceived the album The Wall during Pink Floyd's 1977 In the Flesh Tour, when his frustration with the audience became so acute that he spat on the audience. As much of that allegorical opus explores the psychology of distance in extensive touring, The Sick Bag Song is an exploration of love, inspiration and memory shaped around the events of Cave’s 2014 tour with dates covered here in England, Canada, and the U.S. I myself was at the Detroit stop where he was supporting Push The Sky Away, an album that has grown on me. I can attest that this delightful, personal & moving collection of airplane sick bag notation facsimiles and recollections is a great way to spend a snowy afternoon, as it is so internal it lends to the enforced interior consideration. Cave teases out the significant moments, the people, the books and the music that have influenced and inspired him, and drops them fantastically into his Sick Bag. I have enjoyed his recent documentary films and like looking about the scene for books and art that must be part of his inspiration. Here much of that is laid bare. Here are poetry, lyrics, memories, musings, fanciful notions and more in the style of journal entries. The exquisite physical edition reproduces in full colour twenty-two sick bags, each hand-customised by Nick, that are integrated throughout the text much like the 120 page replica of Nick Cave’s handwritten, hand-stamped, and hand-glued notebooks in the Push The Sky special edition, here on Goodreads as Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Push The Sky Away.

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