Bleep

Having first collaborated on Shell Shock in 2014, multifaceted performer and writer Nick Cave rejoins Belgian composer Nicholas Lens for another operatic project. While Cave’s croon appears nowhere on L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S., his cadences can be keenly felt even as a librettist. Cave was tasked with writing 12 litanies — “petitions to a divine maker” — to be performed over Lens’ waltzing compositions, and true to Cave’s songwriting powers, he casts a neat balance between simplicity and deep, moving illumination; secularly religious whilst still devoted to some higher, if unknowable presence, much like his lyrical preoccupations with The Bad Seeds.