Bleep

You may be asking, why isn’t this a Bad Seeds record? Ring-leader Nick Cave and his right-hand-man Warren Ellis have been making music together for years, and it’s safe to assume you’re in for something singular when they slap their names alone on the sleeve. Sure enough, Carnage hosts the acerbic wit and fearsome musicality for which the two have become known, only with a kind of experimental verve becoming of a record made during a global pandemic. There’s an end-of-days atmosphere to the withered distortion of ‘White Elephant’, redolent of Cave’s early post-punk storytelling days, while the likes of ‘Lavender Fields’ blossom and sing like church hymns for a brave new world.