Nick Cave And Warren Ellis - Australian Carnage

by Zena Grieg

published: 8 / 3 / 2024

Nick Cave And Warren Ellis - Australian Carnage

Label: Goliath Entertainment
Format: CD

Exhilarating latest album from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis recorded over three nights ar the Sydney Opera House

Review

The latest release by Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave and his longtime multi-instrumentalist bandmate and collaborator Warren Ellis is an eclectic mix of songs, recorded over three nights in late December 2022 at the iconic Sydney Opera House. Accompanied by Radiohead’s Colin Greenwoood on bass, U2’s Larry Mullen on drums and keyboard and three excellent backing vocalists Wendi Rose, Janet Ramus and T Jae Cole, ‘Australian Carnage’ showcases their 2021 album ‘Carnage’, along with songs from the Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds catalogue, interspersed with jocular asides by Cave. On their sixteen-show tour of Australia Cave reflected: “Every show was moving and unforgettable, from the intimacy of playing in theatres and arts centres, to the vast and uplifting nights at Hanging Rock, through to our final three nights at the inimitable Sydney Opera House”. Highlights of this eighteen-track collection include: the opener, the moving paean to Elvis, ‘Spinning Wheel’; ‘Bright Horses’ sung by Ellis, with its soaring vocals and organ and stubborn spark of hope; the haunting ‘Night Raid’; the emotive title track; the angry, slow-burning tirade against white supremacy ‘White Elephant’, capturing the reactions of Minneapolitans in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd; a striking cover of T. Rex’s ‘Cosmic Dancer’, full of pathos, reverberating to Ellis’s violin; the light-hearted, pastoral ‘Breathless’ introduced by Cave as: “This is a joyful song – so make the fucking most of it!”; the spirited ‘Hand Of God’; the existential ‘Balcony Man’, its provenance an Instagram reel of an Italian couple dancing serenely in their apartment to Fred Astaire during lockdown; and the eerie closer, an exploration of grief and hope, ‘Ghosteen Speaks’ with its ultimately upbeat lyrics enfolding the audience in a sense of peace and intimacy: “Look for me, look for me/I am beside you, you are beside me/You are beside me” . Exhilarating, transformative, ‘Australian Carnage’ resonates with the quality of Cave’s and Ellis’s writing and their enduring appeal as performers.