“All that’s sacred comes from youth,” sang Eddie Vedder way back in 1995, and whatever your views on the merits of Pearl Jam’s music, there’s rarely been a more succinct summation of rock ‘n’ roll’s constant obsession with youthful vigor and the next big thing. Ever since its earliest days, rock music has been an art form based around mythology of iconoclasm and rebellion, its history laden with periodic revolts against the old and declarations of some sort of cultural year zero when everything is new again.

This, of course, raises the question of what happens when rock ‘n’ roll’s protagonists get old. We’ve been thinking about such things this week with the arrival of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ new album Push the Sky Away, a record that continues Cave’s latter-day obsession with being rock ‘n’ roll’s dirtiest older man. … Read More