Push the Sky Away

Push the Sky Away was recorded at La Fabrique in Saint-Remy de Provence in June and July 2012, with additional recording at Sing Sing in Melbourne, The Toy Rooms in Brighton and Seedy Underbelly in Los Angeles, where it was mixed. Nick Launay produced. It was the first Bad Seeds album after Mick Harvey left in January 2009, it brought Barry Adamson back for the first time since Your Funeral... My Trial, and it was the last to feature Conway Savage, who died in 2018.

Cave described the songs as taking shape in a notebook over twelve months, partly from searching the internet for curiosities. In the press release he called the album the "ghost-baby in the incubator" with Warren Ellis's loops as its "tiny, trembling heart-beat". The cover shows Cave's wife Susie Bick, photographed by Dominique Issermann in the couple's bedroom. Thomas Wydler could not tour in support because of health problems.

Singles were We No Who U R in December 2012 and Jubilee Street in January 2013. The band played the whole album once at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood on 21 February 2013. It was their first number one in Australia and reached three in Britain and 29 in the US. NME's Jenny Stevens called it a "majestic and desolate masterpiece", and Metacritic scores it 81 from 46 reviews. The making of the record was documented in the film 20,000 Days on Earth.