Warren Ellis has been the creative force running alongside Nick Cave's in all its forms in various configurations of bands, to film scores and now this collaboration. Becoming part of this constantly refertilising musical presence, whilst Cave goes through another renaissance in his already distinguished career. Unfortunately this time propelled forth on unfolding grief, a consequence of his son Arthur's untimely death. Undoubtedly cathartic, this work also arises from a need to understand the inexplicable. What has happened, how he has felt and responded. Songs on Carnage, are exculpatory, exploratory, trying to explain, expel or contextualise what is not resolvable.
The work they've created together is both personal and universal in its resonances. The songs are allusive in their poeticism, pointing away from his own pain to an imaginative simulacrum. Its as though Caves career has been leading up to this moment, when grief would, as he has said himself, crack him open. Instigating a change in him he cannot reverse, even if he should want to.
A repeated current running through the decades of Cave's work has been his love for a biblical reference, musically mining declamatory oracles, the fundamentalism of southern gothic. Such fevered rants once consumed even his outward demeanour. The passion is now tempered with a resigned lyricism. Faith, whatever it is for him, has remained an obsession, wanting and not wanting it, loving and despising it. Trying to understand, like many of us do, our divergent responses.
And so on Carnage we have a number of tracks that land upon the ear like urging hymns or psalms, such as Lavender Field or Carnage. Plaintive yearning melodies looking for some form of impossible resolution. It is significant that what opens the album is the track Hand of God. Where he swims out to the deepest part of the river and 'lets the river cast its spell on me' hoping to prompt the hand of god, to reach down and save him. Thus proving he exists, or cares. The strings swoon with evident unease, as the words Hand of God are incantated, as though calling for God to be present, to explain themselves. Cave rolls and groans his words and voice around an almost mythic search for clarity.
And from this track onward the search for resolution permeates each following track. The sky returning as a metaphor repeatedly, from which a presence, a brief remembrance or the Kingdom may emerge. Somewhere he could rest easier. The obliqueness of his lyrics draws you into this realm, with its own colour, language and specific imagery. Both worldly and other worldly. Its a compelling album to listened to, yet the thought of returning to it is not without emotional reservations. Love, doubt, hate and melancholy swirl around in this mist of loss and longing, settling on shattered ground. This is often simply heart rending.
CARROT REVIEW - 8/8
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