Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have a new mini- album out, on 10" vinyl available from Nick's Cave Things website. Seven Psalms is seven short spoken word meditations set to semi- ambient, dreamlike music. They flow one into the other and deal with the big questions and big issues Nick Cave has been asking and grappling with for decades now- God, love, loss. They were written during lockdown, one a day for seven days, and recorded at the same time as Carnage but there's not the same level of drama and tension and outright hilarity that Carnage's songs contain. These are straight and honest, directly from him. On Such Things Should Never Happen two mothers lose their children- 'such things should never happen... but they do'- and when I first heard that line it took my breath away. On I Have Wandered All My Unending Days he asks for entrance to 'the mansion in the sky'.
On the B-side is a twelve minute instrumental, the music from the A-side, Psalm Instrumental, as one long piece. Washes of synths, piano, reverb, a choir fading in and out, some violin, chanting, music from a ceremony. Five minutes in Nick is heard speaking the line about the mansion in the sky. It's a long way from The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds, Stagger Lee and Deanna but it's a moving piece of work.
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