SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/129112
Venerable Nick Cave Ready to Sow Bad Seeds at SXSW by Linda Laban 46 SXSWORLD / MARCH FILM-IA 2013 The Bad Seeds launched the album accompanied by a string section and a choir at special concerts in London, Paris, Berlin and Los Angeles, but their proper U.S. tour begins at SXSW. SXSW will also host "Nick Cave in Conversation," a film and music convergence session with Cave and New York-based author Larry Ratso Sloman. It was with the Bad Seeds that Cave first forayed into the world of film. The band's cameo appearance in German director Wim Wenders' 1987 movie Wings of Desire was followed by the 1988 film Ghosts... of the Civil Dead, which saw Cave acting and co-writing the script with director John Hillcoat. And of course, let's not forget Cave's acting role alongside a pompadoured Brad Pitt in 1991's Johnny Suede. "Well, strangely, something kind of happened where I ended up accidentally having a career in movies," says Cave with a chuckle. "That was never really supposed to happen, but it seems to have gone that way. To do the film scores in particular, they're just a pleasure. I do this in collaboration with Warren Ellis. To work quietly and intimately with him outside of the rock and roll format, they're an absolute pleasure to do. I'm always kind of looking to do that sort of work. "But my major concern is to keep writing songs," Cave continues. "That is the difficult thing to do. The stuff [for the Bad Seeds] is quite difficult and painful, because I sit in an office on my own when I'm writing those songs. There's a lot of anxiety and anguish attached to that. All the other stuff that I'm doing is pretty much a joy to be involved in." Prolific or not, Cave is certainly persistent: "There's something about songwriting that feels difficult and because it's difficult, it has its own particular rewards. I've written hundreds of songs now, and I feel that there's a couple of hundred more there. I feel a duty to continue with that and see where it ends up." Duty aside, 30 years of writing and recording with the Bad Seeds have not dulled Cave's passion. "I've found that it's actually growing rather than receding," he says. "It's kind of addictive getting into that creative space that you know is working and you're delivering something that's exciting. It becomes quite addictive to get into that particular space. I like it there." ■ C AT S T E V E N S n February, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds marked three decades of music making with the release of Push the Sky Away, the group's 15th studio album. Even ignoring Cave's other pursuits, such as Bad Seeds side band Grinderman, film scores (The Road, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), screenplays (The Proposition, Lawless) and books (The Death of Bunny Monroe), his work as singer, lyricist and musician for the Bad Seeds alone has made him one of rock and roll's most prolific forces. "Yeah, maybe some would describe me as that," says the Australianborn 55-year-old who has called London home for many years. "I'm not sure that I am. It comes easy; let's put it that way. Not writing songs, songwriting is difficult. But a lot of the other writing, I can just sit down and get it done. I have a workman-like approach to these things." Classifying Cave as having a good work ethic doesn't cut it for him either: "I don't know about an ethic, but I like to get things done fast and out of the way. I don't procrastinate and I don't spend a lot of time thinking about [doing] things." The Bad Seeds began to take shape around 1983 after Cave and his school friend, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey, folded their previous band, the Birthday Party. They had gained reasonable European success with that band while Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds being lumped in with goth rock and eventually named their new band after a Birthday Party EP. The Bad Seeds' first album, From Her to Eternity, arrived in 1984, displaying an experimental industrial influence courtesy of co-founder Einstürzende Neubauten guitarist, Blixa Bargeld. But its raw, nihilistic sound was galvanized by Cave's melodious baritone and poetic lyrics. The album was a critical success, but it wasn't until Murder Ballads in the mid-'90s that the Bad Seed's nervy, brooding—and, by that time, more song driven—sound translated to a wider audience. It was also in the '90s that the Bad Seeds' shifting lineup added its current members: bassist Martyn P. Casey, drummer and percussionist Jim Sclavunos and violinist/multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, also of Australian instrumental band The Dirty Three. Harvey, unceremoniously, left the Bad Seeds in 2009 after touring was done for 2008's Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, and Cave is now the sole remaining founding member. Compared with Dig and Grinderman's two raucous rock albums, Push the Sky Away is a softer-edged, but no less lyrically barbed, set of ballads with a magnificent centerpiece, the haunting "Jubilee Street." On Tuesday, March 12, SXSW presents the Music and Film Convergence event: "Nick Cave in Conversation" with author Larry Ratso Sloman. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds perform on Wednesday at Stubb's BBQ (801 Red River St.).