Seven Psalms

Sound DNA

• Folk
• Singer-Songwriter

• stripped-back
• mournful
• spiritual

About

For a week during lockdown, Nick Cave wrote one original psalm each day, meditating on themes like faith, grief, and praise. Set to amorphous arrangements from Cave and longtime creative partner Warren Ellis (The Bad Seeds, Dirty Three), these short spoken-word pieces evoke intimate theater as much as they do private poetry. “I am the mist maker moving through the throng/A cloud of carnage everywhere I roam,” Cave pronounces on the apocalyptic “Have Mercy on Me,” before changing tack to make a plea for compassion. Cave has long taken influence from the Bible for his lyrics, and here the music follows suit in the angelic organ shading “How Long Have I Waited?” and the synthetic choral tinges of “Splendour, Glorious Splendour.” The delicate life-and-death study “Such Things Should Never Happen” echoes tragedies from Cave’s own family, yet it’s ultimately warm and hopeful. A nearly 12-minute instrumental follows the psalms, moving between ambient ethereality and more substantial turns. It’s more open to interpretation than the rest of the project, while still conveying a sense of release.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits