Lest we dismiss Grinderman as a one-off experiment designed to hotwire the creative libidos of Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds, the growling four-piece has followed up its popular self-titled debut with an album simply dubbed Grinderman 2. A reeling nine-song listen, it’s thoroughly lashed with surreal imagery, caustic psych guitar, garage bombast, and a fair bit of the first album’s lecherous swagger. Befitting the whole point of the band, the album is very much a showcase of frontman Cave, multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn Casey and drummer Jim Sclavunos. There’s a devilish sense of humour to this second record, as evidenced in the lead single ‘Heathen Child’ and its insane film clip (see below), but there’s also some romance in the marathon gypsy raga ‘When My Baby Comes’ and even airy pop in the reference-heavy gem ‘Palaces Of Montezuma’.

Long an Aussie icon for being the talkative fiddler of the Dirty Three, Ellis has played in the Bad Seeds since the ’90s and composed several film scores with Cave, compiled last year on the two-disk collection White Lunar. A native of the central Victorian city Ballarat and later Melbourne, Ellis now lives in Paris. He spoke to TheVine about Grinderman whilst in the South of France, taking in a bit of late-summer beach scenery that just happened to include Tex Perkins in Speedos.

--

You’ve been working with Nick and the other guys for so long. Is the songwriting process really intuitive at this point?

I think the playing is. I’m not sure about the songwriting, because I think we try to approach it in a different way. It’s more of a group affair, working out some of the ideas. As opposed to what’s generally been the case with the Bad Seeds, where Nick will write a batch of songs and when he feels like he’s ready to go into the studio, then we go in and work out how to play the material. Certainly it’s the case with Grinderman and the last Bad Seeds album where we decided to open up the initial groundwork for the material and have other people involved in that. I think Nick realised he couldn’t write a certain song on his own and needed people around to push things in a different way. [That approach] isn’t solely with Grinderman now, but it certainly is inherent to Grinderman.

Is improvising part of that?

Totally. I mean, for both albums we went in for like five days and sat down and just started playing with very few formed ideas. The first album was very much about us going in to try and find the sound for the group. We’ve been playing together for quite a long time in the Bad Seeds and doing various other things [together], but we were trying to see what we could come up with, just the four of us. The second album we had the same approach, where we would just record non-stop for five days and then weed through it and see what ideas were there that sounded genuinely fresh to us. These sessions are a real marathon effort, from like 10 in the morning to midnight. We’d leave the tape rolling. It goes from really inspired to the absolute, total, biggest ball of crap you’ve ever heard in your life. And it’s kind of interesting to see that, that it gets to this absolute desperation to do something. Sometimes something comes and sometimes something doesn’t, but it’s an approach that really works for us. It’s really nice to have nothing and then just try and find something.

Do you ever get so caught up in it that you can’t separate what’s great from what’s shit?

Well, I guess you’d hope that at the end of it you can pick some things out. When you’re in there doing it, you have no idea. I remember after this one, we went away and I wasn’t really sure if there was anything. And then about a week later I got the CDs [of the studio recordings] and I was pleasantly surprised that there was some ideas in there. Because it’s very hard to tell, actually, until after the fact. The things that you feel like are going to be good, they end up not being very good at all. And there’s things that really surprise you, and a lot of them are quite often the accidents.


Grinderman - 'Heathen Child'

Despite this album being quite distinct from the first one, you’ve named it Grinderman 2. Why was that?

Oh, I guess it’s just like … Grinderman 2, y’know. (Laughs) Jaws 1, Jaws 2, Jaws 3. I’m not really sure what the logic was behind it. Musically it felt like it moved somewhere really different, and that’s what you hope with any record you make. I guess also that, so many records on, thinking up a name felt inappropriate in a way. It felt like it was our second album. It demarcates it too. It’s funny going in there: even though we all play together in other outfits, it genuinely feels like we’re putting out our second album now. (Laughs) We’re just doing it like Zeppelin.

The album is already so saturated that maybe an album title is one more layer you don’t need in this case.

Well, exactly. A title would seem to put it under a kind of umbrella, like a summation of the whole thing. And it felt more like the album could probably speak on its own. And it is a very dense album in many respects. In most respects, actually.

I read an interview you did after recording it, where you talked about the influence of Sly Stone and Amon Duul and said the album was psychedelic. Do you still feel that way?

I can’t remember what I said, but what you said rings a bell. Yeah, I do feel like it’s kind of psychedelic. It feels sort of like stoner rock to me.

Between the nudity and machine guns, the film clip for ‘Heathen Child’ is pretty over the top. Were you ever worried it was too much?

You kind of think it is?

I’m just wondering. I have a baby, so maybe I’ve grown soft.

I’ve got a kid who’s eight and a kid who’s 10, and they can’t stop watching it. I mean, I don’t know. (Laughs) Not when you see what’s going around these days. You’d be a bit stupid to be worried about it, to be honest. I think there’s a kind of line with it. [The Proposition director] John [Hillcoat] directed the video, and he likes to push things. John had the ultimate say in what was going on. I think the idea was to have some fun with it. I do like the idea that all the things that happen on the earth are just by a bunch of gods up there. The bit I love is where Jim causes the destruction of the dinosaurs by hitting a meteor that’s been thrown at him. It’s very playful. I mean, I’ve seen much worse.

I heard the version of ‘Heathen Child’ with Robert Fripp on it. How’d that come about?

Well, it came together after the fact, actually. The album was together and we had remixes [of the single] with people like Andy Weatherall and A Place To Bury Strangers. It’s one of those ideas record companies seem to have. We tried it last time to see what might come up. It was just a way to try and open things up a bit more, because all that stuff is usually very closed with the Bad Seeds. Grinderman is very much an attempt for us to open things up and engage in the ever-changing musical world. And try to get our music in different places, y’know. And the idea of getting Robert Fripp to come in and play along with the track came up, and we all thought it was a good idea. We all really like King Crimson and the stuff he did on the Eno albums. We wanted to keep Grinderman very much about the four of us, and when we present this live, we want this to just be the four of us, not bring in additional people to recreate the [albums]. The Robert Fripp thing just seemed like a thing to have after as a bonus thing. Did you like it?

Yeah, it beefs it up. Not that the original was lacking swagger…

Hmm.


Grinderman - 'Heathen Child' (with Robert Fripp)

I saw some credits that mentioned you playing a “Fendocastor.”

It’s a mandocaster, actually. It’s a four-string mandolin made in the ’50s by Fender. I think it was their attempt to get guitarists tuned into the mandolin. It didn’t work. I just happened to pick one up a few years ago and it totally changed my life. I’ve got that and a tenor guitar. Being a fiddle player, it’s allowed me to bring something very different to the group, because it’s tuned like a violin.

Do you have any idea when Grinderman will do a proper Aussie tour?

I think it’d be next year sometime. Next year’s not that far away, so I guess not that far away. (Laughs) It’s been talked about. (Pauses) My god, I just saw Tex Perkins walking on the beach in a pair of Speedos. That’s unbelievable. I’m in the South of France and there’s Tex Perkins in a pair of Speedos. What’s he doing there?

Well, Aussies are well travelled…

They’re everywhere. They’re getting back at everybody that’s going there. Where does it end?

Doug Wallen

--

Grinderman 2 is out Sept. 10 on Mute.