The latest Bad Seeds LP might still be doing the business - find Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! reviewed here - but already Nick Cave's attentions are turning to a follow-up to 2007's debut Grinderman LP.
Said self-titled - reviewed here - was a hit with the critics, finding Cave and cohorts channelling a rawness absent on preceding Bad Seeds releases (but realised on Dig quite excellently). Speaking to Xfm, Cave commented:
"There's a lot of work around the Grinderman project that we wanna do in a more serious way this time. The thing about Grinderman was that we just threw out the record and we made it very quickly. We wondered about its affect on us and it was hugely important on The Bad Seeds.
"When we go in to make the next Grinderman record we don't want it to sound like the last Bad Seeds record, or the Grinderman record before. We're forced to find something new, but that's always been the way.
"The thing that Grinderman will remain committed to is that it doesn't matter; if the whole thing goes belly-up and if people really hate it then we don't care because we have the Bad Seeds anyway, so that gives us an enormous amount of freedom to go and spend three months in Bulgaria or something."
Soon to be playing live at a number of festivals, including Latitude, Grinderman's appearances are sure to put the band in the right mindset for recording a second LP:
"We're going out in a playing mode so we can get in the mood for making the new record, that's why we're doing the live stuff."
Release date? Early 2009 seems likely. Subject to change, obvs.