At other points, CarnageвЂ™s view of 2020 is smaller in scale and more prosaic. Then it resolves into a beautiful, ragged chorus that carries a distinct hint of late-60s Rolling Stones and faint hope of absolution in its lyrics: вЂњThere is a kingdom in the sky,вЂќ Cave offers, a phrase that crops up more than once on the album, delivered with various degrees of conviction. Mysterious horned figures, a biblical sun and a trembling Earth lurk amid Old TimesвЂ™ dive-bombing electronic noise, Suicide-ish synth bassline and Bo Diddley rhythm, while White Elephant offers a very 2020 take on lurid end-times fantasy: statues topple, their necks knelt on, the president calls in the army, violent insults are hurled (вЂњif you ever think of coming around here, IвЂ™ll shoot you in the fucking faceвЂќ), everything happens beneath вЂњa great grey cloud of wrathвЂќ. As a writer, Cave has always given good apocalypse, and, perhaps understandably given the last 12 months, so it is here.

But if Ghosteen was an album audibly born out of personal tragedy, Carnage feels more rooted in current events: вЂњWhen everything is ordinary until itвЂ™s not,вЂќ as Cave sings on closer Balcony Man. In its switches between songs with something like a standard verse-chorus structure and more abstract, serpentine material вЂ“ songs that move, as the title track puts it, вЂњlike a raincloud that keeps circling overheadвЂќ вЂ“ you hear the push and pull between the finely crafted structure of CaveвЂ™s writing and EllisвЂ™s more freeform approach. Frequently beat-free, it is based around EllisвЂ™s electronics, loops and string arrangements. (2021) Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGEДЄt 63, Nick CaveвЂ™s artistic standing only seems to be growing: the Bad Seeds somehow graduated to playing arenas on the back of 2016вЂ™s harrowing Skeleton Tree, their least commercial-sounding album in decades its follow-up Ghosteen, an extraordinary examination of loss, grief and hope, was among the best-reviewed albums of 2019 credited to Cave and chief musical foil Warren Ellis alone (the pandemic presumably preventing the reconvening of the Bad Seeds), Carnage is less grand than its predecessor вЂ“ half an hour shorter, devoid of the lengthy epics that dominated its second half вЂ“ but it follows GhosteenвЂ™s lead musically.

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