NICK CAVE just gets better and better. At 51, and with that Seventies porn-star look going on – handlebar moustache, jet-black hair surrounding balding pate, crucifix dangling behind an open neck shirt – the lean, be-suited Aussie is in formidable form right now, at an age when most artists have either retired or are living on past glories.
His most recent album with the Bad Seeds, Dig Lazarus Dig!!!, has been universally acclaimed as one of their very best and, in addition to touring, he is working both on a new film script and a new film score for John Hillcoat, who directed 2006's ou
tback epic The Proposition from a script penned by Cave himself.
Oh, and he – who across three decades has been a prolific songwriter, poet, author, singer, screenwriter, and occasional actor – next year releases his first novel since taking on the southern gothic in his bizarre baroque tale, And The Ass Saw The Angel, in 1989.
The last time we encountered the prince of darkness, during his sold-out solo performance at the Playhouse Theatre in February, 2006 the chain-smoking Cave was accompanied on the stage by a trimmed-down Bad Seeds line-up – Warren Ellis (violin), Martyn Casey (bass) and Jim Sclavunos (drums).
His return to the Capital, at the Corn Exchange on Wednesday, sees a full Bad Seeds' line-up reunite to perform a selection of new songs from the follow-up to Dig Lazarus Dig!!!
As a youngster who idolised one of Scotland's bona fide music legends, Alex Harvey, Cave loves playing in this country, and says he'd like to pay a musical tribute to his hero.
"At school in Australia a guy in the class above turned me on to The Sensational Alex Harvey Band," he says. "It was almost like a bit of secret information he'd given me – a great band nobody else knew anything about."
He started buying classic TSAHB albums and they had a massive influence on his music.
"When I started off in a band I'd perform 80 per cent Alex Harvey material," he confirms. "We were basically a Harvey covers band, but nobody in Australia knew the songs."
Dig Lazarus, Dig!!! relies upon a biblical story for its lyrical hook – indeed Cave's work on the whole has been greatly influenced by the Old and New Testaments – but, perhaps having had his personal beliefs grilled once too often, he doesn't want to talk about religion.
"Lazarus feels more like an important Bad Seeds record to me," he says. "But Grinderman (nicknamed the Mini-Seeds, they are a side-project of the singer's] is in there. I did Grinderman for all sorts of reasons, and one was to throw a bomb underneath the whole thing.
"We did everything we could not to make it sound like the last Bad Seeds album (2005's Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus] and we did certain things musically that made that inevitable," he continues. "I didn't play any piano on the album, Warren didn't play any violin, Mick (Harvey) who usually plays electric guitar only played acoustic guitar, and there was a huge amount of percussion put on it."
Somewhat surprisingly, Cave, who had one of his heroes, Johnny Cash, cover The Mercy Seat on the album American III: Solitary Man, says that a career highlight was working with fellow Australian Kylie Minogue, with whom he duetted on the song Where the Wild Roses Grow, from 1996's Murder Ballads album.
"It was something else to work with Kylie," he enthuses "I was a drop-down-on-your-knees fan. So it was very exciting working with her. I'm trying to think of another female artist I'd like to work with. I can't, to be honest."
With around 35 years in the music industry under his belt, Cave's thirst for pushing boundaries – be it by dipping his toes into movie-making, novel-writing, employing a violinist who is banned from playing the instrument or planning to ditch his current home in Brighton for Bangkok – means he is not an artist given to bouts of nostalgia.
But, with a retrospective box set and an induction into the Australian Hall Of Fame now behind him, the music veteran looks as far away from misty-eyed reminiscence as ever.
"It was done reluctantly but things happened that made me look back on everything; people seem to want me to do that," he explains, quizzically. "But I'm superstitious about these things and nothing really seemed to happen for me. I just went back to work.
"The first two albums I worked on were terrible on every level," he says with real honesty. "I'd hate to be judged on that."
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Corn Exchange, Newmarket Road, Chesser, Wednesday 7.30pm, £32.50, 0131-443 0404The full article contains 809 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
