Nick Cave has announced that he went into the studio during lockdown to record the next Bad Seeds album Carnage, which will be the 18th studio album released from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, following 2019’s Ghosteen.
The announcement follows Cave’s previous statement last month to fans via the Red Hand Files, that he felt that now was the “opportunity to take stock” and “time to make a new record“, after having to cancel his already rescheduled 2021 UK and European tour due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
instead of touring in 2020 Cave released the live film and album ‘Idiot Prayer‘, which was recorded as an intimate solo show filmed at London’s Alexandra Palace during lockdown.
Now, once again through a response to the question “How’s your Lockdown?” posed by a London-based fan named Tobias, Cave confirmed that he has been in the studio with his fellow Bad Seeds collaborator Warren Ellis.
Read the full statement below:
“Dear Tobias,
In many ways lockdown has felt weirdly familiar, like I’ve experienced it before. I guess this should come as no surprise as I was a heroin addict for many years and self-isolating and social distancing were the name of the game. I am also well acquainted with the mechanics of grief — collective grief works in an eerily similar way to personal grief, with its dark confusion, deep uncertainty and loss of control. For me, lockdown feels like a state mandated version of more of the same — a formalisation of the kind of hermit-like behaviour to which I’ve always been predisposed, and so, as difficult as it has been to see the devastation and anguish caused by the pandemic — including to the lives of those close to me, and many who have written into The Red Hand Files — I have been doing okay.
I am surprised, though, at just how hard not being able to play live has felt. I have come to the conclusion that I am essentially a thing that tours. There is a terrible yearning and a feeling of a life being half-lived. I miss the thrill of stepping onto the stage, the rush of the performance, where all other concerns dissolve into a pure animal interrelation with my audience. I miss the complete surrender to the moment, the loss of self, the physicalness of it all, the feeding frenzy of communal love, the religion, the glorious exchange of bodily fluids — and The Bad Seeds themselves, of course, in all their reckless splendour, how I miss them. As much as sitting behind my desk can bring me a lot of joy, and the imagination can be a stimulating, even dangerous place, I long for the wanton abandon of the live performance.
Anyway, as promised in my last issue, I did go into the studio — with Warren — to make a record.
It’s called CARNAGE.
Love, Nick”
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