Let me start this off with a short disclaimer: I love Nick Cave. In my eyes, this deity of Australian culture can do no wrong. So if you can’t handle a bit of personal bias, it’s probably best to shuffle along now. The man is an undisputable legend, boasting an extraordinary artistic career which spans the best part of the last three decades. You may know him as the hot-headed howler who fronted post-punk pioneers The Birthday Party, though his most well known (and loved) work has come via his stalwart group Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. When not fronting rock bands, Cave also moonlights as a published novelist and regularly collaborates with his multi-instrumentalist muse Warren Ellis to create gripping film soundtracks.
Phew! With a resume like that, the 53 year old could be forgiven for taking it easy. But age has not wearied him; if anything, Cave is more focused and prolific than ever. The latest project he’s thrown himself into is a demented and devilishly perverse offshoot of the Bad Seeds. It’s called GRINDERMAN and the group is just about to tour the country with the Big Day Out on the back of their highly acclaimed sophomore effort, Grinderman 2. I was lucky enough to get the chance to speak with Jim Sclavunos, the American who drums for both bands and has been a part of Cave’s inner circle since the mid-‘90s.
“The origins of Grinderman were actually in this ‘Nick Cave solo’ thing that we were doing,” Sclavunos explains. “It never really had a proper name. Nick and Warren had started that at one point and it was a way of Nick being able to play live more frequently because the Bad Seeds are such a complicated operation to take on the road. Everybody was for the most part living in Australia, so he wanted a little operation that could do some of the smaller cities, some of the smaller venues, and eventually Marty [P. Casey, bass] and I got pulled into the ranks.”
One notable musical aspect that has set apart Grinderman from its predecessor is its brazen and unashamedly sleazy lyrics. No Pussy Blues was the group’s first big single; a sordid tale in which Cave, try as he might, is unable to convince the object of his affection to reciprocate his advances (and that’s putting it quite politely). The twisted humour continues on Grinderman 2. Take Worm Tamer for example: “Well my baby calls me the Loch Ness Monster / Two great big humps and then I’m gone.”
Though humorous lyrics seem to have been one constant in Cave’s output, other aspects of his life have changed drastically over the course of his career. Long gone are the wild days of alcohol and drug abuse; Cave is a family man now and approaches songwriting with a business-like attitude. Sclavunos reckons he’s much better for it. “His life got quite a bit more stable and part of that was getting clean, raising a new family with a new wife and reaching a certain age where your attitude just sort of changes.” He continues, “he’s been madly prolific in the past few years. I have to take that as quite a positive thing and a noticeable change.”
Prolific is an understatement. In the last four years Cave has blessed us with both Grinderman albums, 2008’s stellar Bad Seeds release Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! and has promised in recent interviews that 2011 will herald the arrival of the group’s as yet untitled fifteenth album. “We’re quite excited about the new Bad Seeds album,” Sclavunos admits. “It’s going to be quite an adventure because this’ll be the first time the Bad Seeds exist as a wholly different band than they were when they started. Nick’s the only remaining person from the original line-up; it’s been moving and evolving for years and when Mick [Harvey] left a couple of years ago, that was the last tie with the past.” He dismisses my suggestion of Harvey’s departure as a chance for a clean slate for the band, offering instead “we carry a lot of history with us and it’s a history we’re proud of even if we’re at times disrespectful of it. There’s definitely a sense of you’ve come from somewhere and you want the next step to make sense in the greater perspective of what the band’s done before.”
I query as to whether the current pattern of taking it in turns to release an album from each group will continue to be the norm. “Remains to be seen,” ponders Sclavunos. “That’s been the plan by default, if you could call it a plan, for the past couple of years. As long as both bands feel relevant to the people involved, then why not?” Go for it, I say. Switching gears and stepping into Grinderman mode has invigorated the Bad Seeds, with everyone – the band members and listeners alike – benefitting from the outcome.
This article was originally written in January 2011, when Grinderman were headlining the Big Day Out tour. Fast forward 11 months and they have just headlined the Homebake Festival and will continue on with a headline spot at the Meredith Music Festival this weekend. Rumour has it that they've arranged for a lunar eclipse to occur in the middle of their set - should be pretty darn special.
Check out the boys belting out a pretty awesome studio version of Worm Tamer below.
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