A tender gift from two old pals — what more could we want?

ROCK Nick Cave & Warren Ellis Carnage (Goliath)

★★★★★

IT WAS already evident that Nick Cave’s idea of an impromptu lockdown creation was somewhat different from the rest of us. While other musicians were dropping into Instagram Live with an acoustic guitar, he was being filmed in the vast empty space of Alexandra Palace for last July’s concert film Idiot Prayer.

He says there was “nothing too premeditated” about this album, which “just fell out of the sky”, with its eight songs taking their initial shapes in just two-and-a-half days, but if it’s a sketch, that’s far from obvious.

Years of working alongside Warren Ellis must have offered a shortcut to high quality songwriting; Ellis is a key member of The Bad Seeds and Cave’s other, noisier band Grinderman and both feature on the soundtracks of films such as The Road.

Like the last Bad Seeds album, this is characterised by Cave’s portentous not-quite-singing being mixed with shimmering, abstract electronics, but there’s a bit more energy and a few touches that puncture the gravitas.

Hand of God is an unsettling beginning, with ominous descending strings joined by an urgent rhythm. The lurching White Elephant is a wild centrepiece, with Cave revelling in surrealism and threats of violence, the repetitions suggesting the lyrics are firing from the top of his head.

While his words often sound like they could have been lifted from the Bible, here he applies a salad spinner to current events: “Protester kneels on the neck of a statue/ The statue says, ‘I can’t breathe’.” Another simple but memorable line, “This morning is amazing and so are you,” is repeated over warm piano chords and a cooing choir on Balcony Man.

It’s perhaps a reflection of the accessible, genuinely friendly Cave, who answers fan questions with a “Love, Nick” on his website The Red Hand Files — joyful in the easiest way, providing solace amid the communal catastrophe. What more could we ask for from a spontaneous gift?