Nick Cave interview

Old Nick.

He has been spitting hellfire and damnation for years, but now that he has turned 50, is Nick Cave finally mellowing? Of course not, he tells Simon Hattenstone

Interview by Simon Hattenstone
Saturday February 23, 2008
The Guardian


A high-maintenance kind of guy ... Nick Cave.

Photograph: Muzi Quawson

Nick Cave is sitting behind his desk, long of limb and droopy of tache. He's wearing a suit, of course. Super-smart. And yet there's something distinctly spivvy about him. I feel as if I'm being interviewed for a job by a secondhand car salesman in a John Waters film. But instead of cars, Cave is flogging film scripts, novels, lectures and, of course, music.

Cave is one of rock's greats. While many of his fans expected the once heroin-addled gothic punk to be long dead by now, he's actually creating more than ever. He gets up early, goes to work in his office (a flat connected to his house in Hove), does an honest day's work, returns home in the evening to his wife and kids, and starts out again the next day. He doesn't take drugs, he doesn't drink, he doesn't even smoke. In one way, he says, life is no longer worth living; in others, he says, it has never been better.

It's 30 years since Cave first made himself heard with the Birthday Party. He was tall and gangly, black-haired, with spectre-white skin, beautiful despite his spoilt-boy's snub nose - and inexplicably angry. Unlike their British counterparts, the Birthday Party - all of them Australian - weren't railing against the monarchy or the establishment. They were simply railing. The music was cacophonous and spit-furious, and occasionally heartbreakingly tender. They were always going to implode, and when they did in the early 80s, Cave went on to form the Bad Seeds, who were to all intents and purposes his backing band. He took more drugs, drank more, moved from Melbourne to London to Berlin to New York to Sao Paulo, all the time travelling farther down the road to nihilistic obliteration. His lyrics preached Old Testament-style hellfire and damnation, then he discovered the New Testament and wrote love songs, even if they still ended in bloody despair.

Whenever you think you understand Nick Cave, he chucks something different in your face. As he segues into his 50s, his latest album with the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, visits familiar New Testament territory, but now Lazarus is in 70s New York, and he's lost and confused and can't make head nor tail of the modern world. In another persona, as Grinderman on a previous album last year, he blasted out songs about being a literate ageing rocker who can no longer get the chicks ("I read her Eliot, I read her Yeats, I tried my best to stay up late, but she still didn't want to"). The accompanying video shows young people shagging, pigs, goats, rabbits, everybody at it - except Cave. "Igot the no-pussy blues," he screams in libidinous despair. In between, he and fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis turned their hand to a classical film score for The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford.

In Cave's office, there are two pianos, a double-neck guitar and enough books to fill a library. His desk is cluttered with the paraphernalia of his work - lyric sheets, pens, the old-fashioned cassettes on which he records new songs. Above his head is a painting of Christ in all his suffering. There are leather sofas and prints on the wall of cats in varying degrees of derangement. He says he would find it impossible to work at home with his wife, the model Susie Bick, and their seven-year-old twin sons. He often complains that musicians are the laziest bastards in the world, writing 12 songs every two years, and they haven't got a clue what real work is like. Much of the time, he sits in the office, doing nothing, waiting for inspiration, ditching ideas. These dead periods are not enjoyable, but they are necessary. Sunday is his day off.

When Cave gets a passion for something, it often becomes an obsession. I ask about those cats. He tells me they are by the Victorian artist Louis Wain, a man who became schizophrenic after his wife died and whose illness is reflected in his increasingly delirious portraits of cats. "Look, Google it." "Google it" is one of Cave's favourite expressions. Ask about his past and he'll often tell you to Google that as well.

There is something terse and scary about Cave - which is not surprising, considering he's spent so long modelling himself as a modern-day Beelzebub - but he can be gentle and seductive, too. He smiles and laughs (even at himself) more often than you might expect. YouTube the Birthday Party and the Boys Next Door (their original incarnation) and you can find the two extremes of early Nick Cave. On Shivers, he looks like a punk Bryan Ferry - a gorgeous, suited-and-booted crooner. On the live recording of Nick The Stripper, he is screeching self-loathing lyrics, dressed in a nappy.

Cave grew up in rural Victoria, Australia. His father, Colin, taught English and maths at the local school; his mother, Dawn, was its librarian. Cave loved the epic landscape, but hated the attitudes of small-town Australia. It was the early 70s and he was influenced by David Bowie and Lou Reed and Iggy Pop - songwriters, performers, heroes of pop's avant garde. Everything cool seemed continents away in London and New York, and Cave wanted some of it.

By the time he was 12 he was getting into trouble, so his parents packed him off to a boarding school in Melbourne. That's where he met the boys who went on to become the Birthday Party. "We were interested in art and we weren't particularly interested in sport, so we were considered homosexuals. There's no two ways about it - we were the school poofters." There's a story that Cave and his friends walked through school one day carrying handbags, and when people shouted abuse at them, they walloped them with the bags, each of which contained a brick. Is that true? He looks weary. "Oh, you're only interested in the truth rather than a good, entertaining article."

Does he prefer a lie? "No, but there are times when the truth is necessary and times when myth-making is necessary. When you're talking about rock'n'roll, myth-making is what it's all about. Who wants to know the fucking truth about Jimi Hendrix? We want to know the myth. We want to know he got on that plane to England with that electric guitar, acne cream and pink hair curlers - that's all he brought."

Guitarist Mick Harvey met Cave at school and has played in bands with him ever since. "He always stood out," he says. "He flew in the face of authority." Was Harvey one of the handbag boys? He laughs. "What stories has he been telling you?"

Harvey didn't take drugs and for a time was teetotal, but the others more than made up for him. One night on stage, with Harvey playing drums, Cave threw a bottle over his shoulder and it hit him on the head. Harvey was livid. "But then, he was totally out of it." Did he worry for them? "No, when you're that age you don't really think about the long-term effects. A couple of people did overdose in the mid-80s. Then Tracy [the Birthday Party's bassist] developed epilepsy, which I suspected was through a combination of taking drugs and drinking very heavily, and we know how that ended." Tracy Pew died after an epileptic fit in 1986.

Punk provocateur Lydia Lunch supported the Birthday Party in 1981. She and Cave didn't hit it off. "We were on two separate planets. I was wild, uninhibited. Even though he's an extrovert on stage, he was very shy." Lunch calls Cave one of the great poets, and remembers the first time he showed her his work - thousands of handwritten words, so small you needed a magnifying glass to read them. "He was so hyper-conscious and so sensitive, which is beautiful to me, but it's a painful road to take." Was he depressive? "He was a heroin addict - of course he was fucking depressive."

When Cave was 19, his father was killed in a car crash. Colin Cave was a serious man who believed culture was the answer to society's ills: beauty would save the world. His philosophy seemed to inspire and enrage Cave - he himself looked for beauty, but what he found was corrupted and destructive. At the time of his death, his father and he had drifted apart. Where was he when he found out his father had died?

"I really don't want to go into all that."

Why not? "It upsets me. Google it, just Google it."

When I get home I do Google it, and discover that Cave had been at a police station, being charged with burglary. His mother, as usual, was at the station bailing him out. Shortly afterwards, having failed the second year of his art course at college, Cave and the Birthday Party left Australia for England.

A few weeks after our first meeting, I meet Cave and most of the Bad Seeds in London where they are recording a trailer for the new album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! They are re-enacting a seance in a darkened room. Cave is wearing a turban - he looks strange even by his standards. He is improvising his lines and keeps bursting out laughing. I tell him he's corpsing. He's never heard the expression, but he likes it. I'm staring at his hair. Surely, it can't be that black now... yet the sideburns and tache are a perfect match.

His twin boys, Earl and Arthur, are there - Arthur plays drums, Earl is on guitar. I ask Earl who's a better guitarist, him or his dad. "Me," he answers instantly. The boys are excited. They are about to head off for the premiere of Dr Who with Kylie Minogue. Cave had his one reasonably big hit with Minogue in 1995 - Where The Wild Roses Grow. It gave him commercial viability and her a new creative credibility. The song is about a man who can possess his beloved only by stoving her head in ("I kissed her goodbye and said all love must die").

Love, possession and violent death are recurrent themes in his work. Perhaps his best-known song is The Mercy Seat, about an unrepentant con on death row, which was recorded by Johnny Cash shortly before he died. Cash is one of Cave's heroes - another songwriter wrestling with the notions of redemption and retribution, and the man who showed Cave that popular music could be bleak, with a whiff of evil. He also admires Leonard Cohen and Nina Simone, two singer-songwriters who have plumbed the depths.

He tells me how Cash's producer, Rick Rubin, rang to ask permission to record The Mercy Seat. "My stomach is dropping out at this point. I said, 'I'll think about it, Rick' and I waited half a minute and came back and said, 'Nah, I don't have any objections' and he chuckled and said, 'I didn't think you would.' "

Why did he wait? "I wanted to play it cool."

The notion of cool has always been important to Cave. At times, in his white, three-piece suits, he has almost come across as a parody of himself, hovering close to Saturday Night Fever territory. Did he work at it? "No, I was just always cool." He laughs, but I think he means it. "Sometimes it crosses paths with what's fashionable, and then I become obsolete again."

Susie Bick, Cave's wife and a former Vivienne Westwood muse, watches while the video is made. She is beautiful, with black hair and very pale skin, not wholly unlike Cave. When they met, she says, "We had just broken up from relationships and we were both heartbroken. We were mostly thinking about being heartbroken. It was very intense, but even so it took us about two years to go on a date. We were a bit shy, actually."

What's Cave like? "He's just adorable. He's just the warmest person, he's got the biggest heart."

But isn't he supposed to be the antichrist? "I know!" She giggles. "He's so the opposite of what people imagine. And he's the best dad in the world." It's not what we want to hear about Nick Cave.

Cave and fellow Australian Warren Ellis are sitting at a table, eating burgers and whingeing about the way they are portrayed by the media - drugs, booze and bad behaviour. "Such an old story," says Ellis, who is Cave's chief collaborator. He joined the band in 1995, to play a bit of violin on the album Let Love In, and stayed. Both were addicted to heroin, but Ellis was trying to stop.

Now they regard themselves as workaholics. "The day we finish mixing this, it's like, 'Right, do the next one,' " Ellis says. "It's really addictive. The more you make, the more you want to make."

Even in their junkie days, though, they worked hard. Cave says addiction didn't hamper creativity, except when they were sick or out scoring. He hasn't touched drugs for 10 years. "I'd like to say Susie stopped me. But the truth is that nobody can kick that stuff for you. You have to do it yourself. That I was head over heels in love with the most beautiful woman on the planet didn't hurt, though."

Look through Cave's work and you see the geography of his influences - Australia in the landscape, Germany in the sound and fury of early Bad Seeds records, America and Britain in his pop heroes. While living in Germany, Cave spent three years in a bedsit - the walls covered with religious and pornographic images - writing his 1989 novel And The Ass Saw The Angel. It tells the story of Euchrid Eucrow, a vengeful mute living in a fundamentalist community in America's south. Overwritten maybe, but the book is a beautifully imagined horror story illuminated by stark images ("Mah father loomed over me like a crooked stick"). More disturbingly than Cave's songs, it portrays a world of gratuitous cruelty and a religion founded on retribution.

Eucrow, in his feral world, and Cave have this at least in common - both hear voices in their heads. Sometimes Cave's voices tell him he can do anything and leave him spent and exhausted: in the past, he took heroin to still the voices and himself. Sometimes, especially at the beginning of projects, the voices tell him he's a hopeless loser.

Another day, another suit. It's mid-January, and Cave is carrying a heavy case and heading off to Paris to promote the new album. He is slurping his tea and we are talking children. As well as the twins, he says, he has two 16-year-old boys. Blimey, I say, two sets of twins. "Erm, no. They were very... they were quite close to each other."

Months? "Well, less, actually."

"Bloody hell, Nick," I say as it dawns on me what he's saying.

"It's a wonderful thing, but..."

"Did it not cause domestic strife?

"It was difficult at the time, but it turned out great in the end." Jethro was born in Australia, Luke 10 days later in Brazil, where Cave was living with his mother, the stylist Viviane Carneiro. "To my eternal regret I didn't make much contact with Jethro in the early years. I now have a great relationship with him."

He's not telling me any more. "Google it, you fucker. Google it. There are things you read in Hello! and you think, 'Why the fuck are these people talking about these type of things?' There's this culture of confession and admission, and I find it nauseating."

For all that, Cave did once make an astonishingly personal record - The Boatman's Call in 1997. It is regarded by many as his most beautiful album. It's about breaking up with Luke's mother, falling in love with the musician PJ Harvey (another woman with dark hair and pale skin who bears more than a passing resemblance to him) - and having his heart broken by her. It's one of the most nakedly romantic, and desolate, records ever made. In Far From Me, the penultimate song, he sings, "It's good to hear you're doing so well/But really, can't you find somebody else that you can ring and tell?/Did you ever care for me?/Were you ever there for me?/So far from me."

Was he aware at the time...? "That I was doing the big confessional record? No, no. When I was making half that record I was furious because certain things had happened in my love life that seriously pissed me off. And some of those songs came straight out of that." Does it embarrass him now? "I don't regret making it but, yeah, it does a bit, because the songs are of a moment when you felt a certain way. When you don't any more, you just think, 'Fuck - please!' "

He asks if I've seen the video he and Harvey made for the song Henry Lee, and raises an eyebrow. "Fucking hell! That's a one-take video. Nothing is rehearsed at all except we sit on this 'love seat'. We didn't know each other well, and this thing happens while we're making the video. There's a certain awkwardness, and afterwards it's like, oh..." So you were beginning the relationship in this three-minute video? "Yeah, exactly."

He says he and Susie (pictured overleaf) were recently trawling the internet and came across the video. "She said, 'I do think it's a wonderful video, but I must say I do find it rather hard to watch.' "

His love songs always evoke the inevitability of loss - a feeling fuelled by his father's early death. In 1998 at the Vienna Poetry Festival, Cave gave a lecture on the love song in which he said, "The actualising of God through the medium of the love song remained my prime motivation as an artist." Even on The Boatman's Call, one of his most secular records, many of the songs are like contemporary psalms ("Into my arms, O Lord/Into my arms, O Lord"). In a South Bank Show profile, the film-maker Wim Wenders said, "His songs deal with a desire for pure love or this longing for peace in spite of all the turmoil and unrest happening inside him." Author Will Self put it more earthily, calling them "songs of spiritual yearning dressed in Ann Summers".

I ask Cave why his work is so dominated by God - in the early days, a vengeful God at that. He says that's hard to answer - he's never been the type of writer who looks at the world and expresses what he thinks; instead, he writes and in the writing his vision of the world is shaped. "The brutality of the Old Testament inspired me, the stories and grand gestures. I wrote that stuff up and it influenced the way I saw the world. What I'm trying to say is I didn't walk around in a rage thinking God is a hateful god. I was influenced by looking at the Bible, and it suited me in my life vision at the time to see things in that way."

Why? "Well, things were crap at the time... in my personal life." Because of a vengeful God? "No, I was just crap. It wasn't a gnashing of teeth, Job kind of thing, though I did have a lot of skin complaints, things like that." He smiles. "Yeah, I had a lot of pestilence visited upon me by a vengeful God - you know, scabies, crabs, general stuff like that." Wasn't that because of the sex and drugs? "Well, you've got to blame someone, haven't you?"

I ask whether he really does believe in a greater force, or would he just like to be a believer? "I do believe, but my belief system is so riddled with doubt that it's barely a belief system at all - I see that as a strength rather than a failing."

Cave says you can roughly divide his work - the 70s and 80s is Old Testament, the 90s and onwards is New Testament. "After a while I started to feel a little kinder and warmer to the world, and at the same time started to read the New Testament."

He has a way of smiling when he feels things are wrong or have been misinterpreted. A little-boy smile. "Look," he says, almost apologetically, "when I look back, from 20 onwards, I was actually having a pretty good time, I have to say. I don't look back to 'What a miserable fucking time.' In general I'm a pretty up, buoyant, optimistic kind of person."

Do people think you're a moper? "I hope they don't, but I suspect they do." Maybe that's because there are so many songs about... He completes the sentence for me: "Death and shit."

So is Nick Cave a character? "I don't think so. It's not that I don't feel those things - I feel those things very strongly." He has his lows, when everything feels unbearable and insurmountable, but they are less frequent than they once were. Perhaps, like Leonard Cohen and Samuel Beckett, once he's put his existential angst to paper, he can get on with the important business of living life. "At the end, we're kind of observers - creative people, I mean. I feel like an observer, and I'm pretty much able to step out of things and see how things are playing out."

I'm staring at Cave's jet-black hair, wondering. Does he think he's getting too old to rock at 50? "Yeah, I do think that sometimes. I mean, the whole fame thing is incredibly undignified, anyway. You're allowing yourself to be exposed. A lot of it you can get away with because you're young, but you should know better by the time you reach 50. But, for me, I get such huge benefits for my own psyche, creating, working, that it doesn't at the moment seem an option to do anything about that."

Actually, he says, there is so much rubbish talked about age - as if, when you hit certain landmarks, you start to think and act differently. He's getting quite worked up as he talks and it becomes apparent that age itself is the new authority figure to rebel against. "There's a certain wisdom we are supposed to get, and I'm not really convinced that happens. I mean, you're wiser to a degree. But there's a certain archetype - a tried and tested road for artists in their autumn years: more meditative, less concerned with temporal things and more concerned with spiritual things, all that sort of stuff - I was looking forward to that, but it hasn't really arrived." In fact, Cave says, if anything, he's gone the opposite way. He's been doing the deathly stuff for decades and now he's more concerned with the physical world. "There are things that preoccupy me now that feel weirdly adolescent." What like? "Like sex." He knows it's supposed to be taboo, a little unsavoury, for a man of his age to write or sing about sex but, sorry, that is what he's interested in, so that's what you'll be getting.

And I'm still looking at Cave's hair. Is that really his natural colour? He bursts out laughing. "I've been dyeing my hair since I was 16."

What colour would it be? "I hate to think."

What about the tache and sideboards? "You have a special little brush and stuff. Look, I'm a high-maintenance kind of guy."

Will he ever stop dyeing his hair? God no, he says.

"No, I'll dye it till I die."

· Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is out on March 3.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Baby Animals news

Baby Animals Announce Album and Tour.

by Tim Cashmere @ Undercover - November 19 2007

Baby Animals

We're giving you an early warning (yes, that's the best I could come up with) on a new album from the newly reformed Baby Animals, and a national tour to go with it.

The early 90s Aussie rockers are back with their first album since their split in 1992 – 'Il Grande Silenzio' – which is due to hit stores on January 19.

The album will be released through Liberation Blue and will be made up of acoustic recordings of their hits including 'Rush You' and 'Early Warning'.

Singer Suzi DeMarchi said of the record, "It means The Great Silence, for those who don't speak spaghetti western. It seemed appropriate. It's a soft, quiet, dreamy kind of record. And it's been a long time."

The tour will be a mixture of acoustic and classic rockin' Animals.

Check them out at:

JANUARY

18 – Metro City, Perth
20 – Prince of Wales, Melbourne
23 – South Sydney Juniors, Sydney
24 – Rooty Hill RSL, Rooty Hill
26 – A Day On The Green – Bimbadgen (with Himmy Barnes, Diesel, Mahalia Barnes, Tim Rogers and Archie Roach)
27 – Doyalson RSL, Doyalson

Nick Cave

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Dig Lazarus.

by Andrew Tijs - November 7 2007

Nick Cave at the Forum Theatre in Melbourne

photo by Ros O'Gorman

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have announced their fourteenth studio album 'Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!'

After his recent induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame (and his own induction of the Bad Seeds), Nick Cave and band provide the follow-up to the ambitious double album 'Abattoir Blues/ The Lyre Of Orpheus'.

'Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!' was co-produced by the band and 'Abattoir/ Orpheus'-producer Nick Launay in Richmond, England. Post-YBA British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster will provide the artwork for the upcoming album. The album will be released by Anti- in the UK and the US next March.

Cave and Dirty Three violinist Warren Ellis have just released the soundtrack they made for the new Andrew Dominic Western opus 'The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford'.

Girl Power

If you wanna be a pop star, you better get with the girls.

'Girl Power', once just a slogan, now dominates the pop charts. So what happened to the boys?

Kitty Empire
Sunday October 21, 2007
The Observer

As pop manifestos go, the one touted by the nascent Spice Girls in long-ago 1996 was more suspect than most. Girl Power was a cheeky, hen-night vision of feminism riddled with body dysmorphia and worse. It was all catchphrase and little artistic control, as Spice memoirs have laid bare. But a decade on, with the Girls reunited and retailing their forthcoming album in lingerie chain Victoria's Secret, it turns out that Girl Power was no eye-rolling matter after all, at least commercially.

As 2007 sashays to a close, pop has rarely been more female. A glance at the albums being released up until Christmas reveals a coven of pop high priestesses handbagging each other in pursuit of pop buyers' cash. Britney's comeback has been rushed forward to stave off internet leaks; Kylie's big, sparkly two fingers to cancer arrives next month. In pop, as in life, women seem to outlive men. Deathless disco mama Madonna has a new £60m deal and another pop confection due next year. British pop's most confounding triad, Sugababes, continue to have hits despite having their DNA frequently rearranged; they are the perfect example of a brand, rather than a band.

After a year cooking up her debut in the US, X Factor winner Leona Lewis's imminent album will try to establish her as an enduring pop force. Rihanna's 'Umbrella' was a rain dance so effective it changed the climate and stayed at No 1 for 10 weeks. And the most entertaining girl group of all, Girls Aloud, defy rumours of their demise with a new set, also out next month. We need no reminder that the biggest pop news this year was Kate Nash. Meanwhile, the wellbeing (or not) of Amy Winehouse (though her retro sound is outside the realm of pure pop) remains a national obsession, and her arrest last Thursday in Norway ensures the prurience will continue.

But where are the boys? Genders used to be evenly matched in the pop game. For every female artist, there was a winsome romantic beau, sexually unthreatening to pre-teens but just lush enough to inspire filthy home-made banners from fans on the way to the sold-out arena. In pop's heyday, the Eighties, the Whams and Spands and Frankies defined the age more indelibly and with more make-up than the girls, who have faded from memory (although it is nice when Kim Wilde crops up on a TV gardening show). In the Nineties, clots of chaps - Bros, New Kids on the Block, Take That, East 17, Boyzone, Westlife - ruled the arenas, a status quo that the Spice Girls overturned.

The demise of the boy band has been widely mulled over during the past few years. Even those notional saviours of the genre, McFly, have lost their lustre. True, the Take That reunion and the continued existence of Westlife mean that there will never be a national shortage of swollen multi-part ballads. The odd trouser turn-up does occasionally breach the frilly cordon sanitaire in place around pop - this year Mika was the exception that proved the rule that boys in pop are missing, presumed dead. And Robbie? His most heartfelt and breezy album tanked, making you feel almost sorry for him. Almost.

If boys in pop are all but dead, we know the execution date and the executioners. It was 2002, when two Pop Stars: The Rivals teams squared up. In the red corner, Girls Aloud with their strange, twanging single, 'Sound of the Underground'. In the blue corner, slushy boy band One True Voice, Svengali'd by pop puppeteer Pete Waterman. The smart money was on the fellas, but Girls Aloud staged a historic pop upset when they trounced the hapless, derivative guys and went on to be the most successful British talent show act ever.

What did the boys do in the wake of this symbolic defeat? They stropped. Busted earned the boy band a brief, riffy reprieve from obsolescence. Many more of them felt sorry for themselves, and learned how to play acoustic guitar. Where once a young man could prance under a hundredweight of hair gel and get rich, in the mid-Noughties it was essential to become a sensitive singer-songwriter to impress. What is Paolo Nutini but a lost boy band member trying to cut it as a troubadour? It would take a stylist half a second and some bicycle shorts to shear James Morrison of all his hard-conjured credibility.

Perhaps pop's gendercide is better explained as a diaspora: the cute boys and their ballads moved sideways, out of dance routines and on to guitar stools - or into R&B. In the US, male pop is a one-man show. Justin Timberlake presides over the most impressive post-boy band career ever. Like us, the Americans also have plenty of pouting male singer-songwriters who might once have been pressed into pop shapes; John Mayer sees himself as a serious blues guitarist but has he looked in the mirror? Jack Johnson - a buff surfer with an acoustic guitar - is one of the US's biggest draws.

But if you are looking for the love of a soft-hearted stripling, you will find it has become almost exclusively an urban thing. While our own Craig David is now a figure of fun, in the US, the loverman brigade - Omarion, Joe, Ne-Yo, Akon and Mario - are potent chart players. They take the schmaltz of pop and dress it up in the more attitudinal garb of hip hop. At heart, though, these are ladies' men. Antecedents aren't hard to find here. American music is stuffed with old soul lovermen, and the new breed draw deeply from the well dug by priapic teddy bears Luther Vandross, Alexander O'Neal and R Kelly. But rarely have soppy men appeared in such numbers, so consistently high in the Billboard charts. Usher remains the undisputed champion of this eye-wateringly tedious strand of R&B.

Why has the XY factor gone out of pop? It's not an easy question to answer. Gay men are the pivotal early adopters of all puissant pop outfits. Groups like Take That spent their early months touring gay clubs as well as schools. Have gay men given up on smooth-cheeked wannabes? They may well have ploughed all their cash into supporting needy divas like Madonna and Barbra Streisand instead. According to a tabloid, London's Soho is to erect a statue of Kylie, thanks to lobbying by fans: Soho's denizens are hardly campaigning for Gareth Gates on a plinth.

But the real culprits are probably youngsters. The rosy-cheeked masses who loved pop are fractured now. They are forming aesthetic judgments earlier than previous generations. Instead of being told what to like by Smash Hits and record companies, they are roaming the web, favouring outfits like the Kooks over cute boys with no guitars.

It is also the fault of the acts themselves. With every generation of British boy band, the output became more saccharine. Take That were feisty; Boyzone far duller. By the time the boy band franchise trickled down to Westlife, it was all ballads, all the time. They appealed to grandmothers.

Some of the blame can be ascribed, too, to the lack of imagination of producers and record companies. In R&B, as in pop, it is usually the female-fronted records that take the most musical risks. Producers have done immensely cool, creepy, daft and marvellous things with Britney, Amerie, Aaliyah, Christina Aguilera; Gwen Stefani's records do nothing but monkey about with pop convention.

The sexiness of these female stars - the crux of pop transactions - is a given. As long as they gyrate and smoulder, and some sort of hook is present, the rest of the record can sound like an accident in an electronics factory, and no one will bat an eyelid. Pop's men are more limited, crooning sweet nothings to a swell of synthesised strings. They lack topspin, winks, daring. You can count the men who have fronted avant-garde pop records on two fingers: Timberlake and Usher, whose icy crunk hit of 2004 'Yeah' was the torso-toting dullard's finest moment. Until the records get more exciting, male pop stars are doomed. (We await the new Duran Duran album - laced with collaborations with Justin Timberlake and producer Timbaland - with great interest.) And the new breed? Up 'n' coming foursome Palladium are making a valiant attempt at rekindling the male pop band. Their single, 'High Five', contains such charmingly pre-sexual pop sentiments as 'three kisses for me, and I know she's the marrying kind'. But rather than just dancing giddily, Palladium have had to resort to playing instruments to get attention. They sound like the Feeling with a few added riffs. If they are the best the industry can cook up, pop's men are going to be missing in action for some time yet.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Oldies and Goldies

Some old albums still sell like new.

Titles from the '80s and '90s by bands such as AC/DC, Bon Jovi and Metallica continue to do a brisk business.

By JAKE COYLE

The Associated Press

A POWERFUL PREMIERE: The debut album by Metallica, featuring singer-guitarist James Hetfield, is the second-biggest selling album of the Nielsen SoundScan era. It sold 275,000 copies in 2006.

BERTIL ERICSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Much of the rock 'n' roll and pop canon is well established.

Buying the albums of '60s and '70s acts like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley is akin to a rite of passage for any young music fan. These are the artists that baby boomers love to keep buying, and with whom seemingly every teenager at some point experiments. (Remember A.J. hearing Bob Dylan for the first time in the "Sopranos" finale?)

Now that the '80s and '90s are ancient history, what albums are people still buying from those decades? Do critical favorites like Radiohead and the Pixies grow more popular with time? Or do the Backstreet Bo ys and Madonna still rule the charts?

The short answer is that, above all, people are buying vintage Metallica, AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Guns 'N Roses and, well, Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

AC/DC's "Back in Black" (1980) last year sold 440,000 copies and has thus far old 156,000 this year, according to the Nielsen SoundScan catalog charts, which measure how well physical albums older than two years old are selling. (All figures for this article were provided by Nielsen SoundScan.)

Those "Back in Black" numbers would make most contemporary CDs a success. Metallica's self-titled 1991 album is altogether the second-biggest selling album of the Nielsen SoundScan era, which began in 1991. "Metallica" sold 275,000 copies last year.

Bon Jovi's greatest hits collection "Cross Road" last year sold 324,000 copies, while Guns 'N Roses "Appetite for Destruction" (1987) sold 113,000. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Christmas Eve and Other Stories" (1996) continues to be a holiday favorite; it was bought 289,000 times last year.

Greatest hits compilations are counted as catalog releases, and account for the majority of vintage best-sellers. Artists that commercially peaked in the '80s or '90s that have had lucrative best-of collections include Garth Brooks, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tim McGraw, Creed, Queen, Tom Petty, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Def Leppard, Aerosmith and Lionel Richie.

U2, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Celine Dion, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Dave Matthews Band and the ever-touring Jimmy Buffett also all continue to sell large amounts of old records.

Michael Jackson, of course, still has one of the most desirable back catalogs. His best- selling "Thriller" moves over 60,000 copies a year and his "Number Ones" collection yielded 162,000 sales last year.

Avid fans may be buying everything their favorite artist puts out, but there's more than nostalgia fueling vintage sales.

"Young fans aren't excluded from catalog sales – especially the ones who really get interested in music, there's always that sense of discovery," says Geoff Mayfield, the director of charts at Billboard Magazine.

Not everything maintains long-term success. Asia's self-titled 1982 album was the biggest seller of 1982, but only sold 5,000 copies last year. Whitney Houston's 1985 debut, also self-titled, was 1986's top album, but now sells about 7,000 discs a year.

The same trajectory has befallen past mega-hits like Ace of Base's "The Sign," Bobby Brown's "Don't Be Cruel" and the Spice Girl's "Spice." Though one of the best selling artists of all time, Mariah Carey's self-titled debut sold a measly 5,000 copies last year. The Backstreet Boys' "Millennium" managed only 9,000 sales.

Alas, the turning wheel of fortune isn't always kind to boy bands. "The only thing that kept coming to mind to me was that line in the Bruce Springsteen song: 'Someday we'll look back at this and it will all seem funny,' " recalls Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke.

Now, some critical hits that were trounced on their initial release by the likes of 'N Sync can claim a measure of commercial superiority. The Flaming Lips' "Soft Bulletin," often hailed as one of the best albums of the '90s by critics, sold a solid 38,000 copies last year.

Radiohead's legendary "OK Computer," currently celebrating its 10-year anniversary, last year sold 94,000 copies. Nirvana's "Nevermind" has done even better; it sold 143,000 copies in 2006.

Current events can alter the charts. When Ray Charles died, his older albums spiked for months, says Mayfield. A new album from Alanis Morissette would surely increase sales of her 1995 disc "Jagged Little Pill," one of the best selling albums of the past 20 years.

Likewise, recent reunions of the Police and Genesis can be expected to increase sales of their catalogs. The Police's 1986 compilation "Every Breath You Take" has already doubled its already strong 2006 sales by selling 107,000 copies so far this year.

Many well-regarded albums continue to do healthy business, including: U2's "Joshua Tree," Dr. Dre's "The Chronic," Beck's "Odelay," Wu-Tang Clan's "Enter the Wu-Tang," the Clash's "London Calling," Weezer's "Weezer," and the Pixies' "Doolittle." Each sold at least 20,000 copies last year.

Still, many albums that are consistently revered on critic top-ten lists of the '80s and '90s have not sold much. Joy Division's "Closer," the Smiths' "The Queen is Dead," My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless," and REM's "Murmur" all sold 12,000 copies or less last year.

Labels often reissue classic releases to capitalize on the devotion of die-hard fans and to attract a new audience. In the past few years, revered indie label Matador Records has released Pavement's first three albums, including "Slanted and Enchanted," a disc frequently ranked among the best in the '90s.

"It's almost like a new release for us," says Matador founder Chris Lombardi. "We probably sold in a one-year period, pretty much what those records sold in their first year period when they were initially released."

Though hip-hop continues to rule today's charts, many of its most historic albums don't enjoy the catalog sales that those from rock's heyday do. Public Enemy's "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" sold 15,000 copies last year; Beastie Boys' "Paul's Boutique" sold 22,000; and Run DMC's "Raising Hell" sold far less than both.

So far this year, catalog sales are down 11.7 percent, but that's stronger than overall sales, which are down 14.7 percent, according to Billboard. It's a major portion of the music business. This year's total catalog sales of 95.6 million copies accounts for about 40 percent of all albums sold physically.

When people switched from cassette tapes to compact discs, catalog sales received a windfall as people re-bought their collections. The onset of digital downloading hasn't had that affect because CDs can easily be downloaded to your iPod, but digital stores do have the advantage of unlimited (virtual) store space to sell older music.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has pegged catalog downloads as 64 percent of all download sales in the U.S. (Apple declined to share its iTunes data on catalog sales.) That still leaves illegal downloads unaccounted for, as well as a more important quantity: cultural impact. Though bands like Sonic Youth, the Ramones and Public Enemy may never sell as much as other acts, their influence remains immeasurable.

"Impact is not strictly about sales," says Fricke. "Otherwise everyone would be running around forming bands that sound exactly like Poison."

Rock News 03 2007 encore

Ryan Adams, Paramore, Coldplay, The Pipettes, Tim Finn, Linkin Park, Placebo, Elliott Smith, and Velvet Revolver.

Ryan Adams unveils album tracklisting. 'Easy Tiger' is out June 5

Ryan Adams has revealed the tracks that will make it on to his ninth studio album, set for release in June.

'Easy Tiger' is the follow-up to 2006's '29' , and will feature 13 tracks, which will be titled:

'Goodnight Rose'
'Everybody Knows'
'The Sun Also Sets'
'Halloween Head'
'Off Broadway'
'Two Hearts'
'Tears Of Gold'
'These Girls'
'Two'
'I Taught Myself How To Grow Old'
'Oh My God, Whatever, Etc.'
'Rip Off'
'Pearls On A String'

http://www.nme.com/news/ryan-adams/26823


Paramore announce new album release date. Record gets a summer release

Paramore have attempted to clear up speculation about the release of their new album, following a series of online rumours.

The band are currently recording the follow up 2005's 'All We Know Is Falling' in New Jersey, and expect to have the new album finished and mastered by the beginning of April.

The album is being produced by David Bendeth who has worked with Hawthorn Heights and Ima Robot.

Although no definitive release date has been announced, several possible days have been rumoured on various websites.

However a spokesperson for the band has told NME.COM that nothing is confirmed yet, although Paramore are considering two possible dates, June 11 or 25 (with a US release the the following day depending on which day is decided upon).

Meanwhile, the band are then expected to hit the road, touring Japan and Australia at the end of March, before returning to the US for April and May dates.

A UK tour for May and June is expected to be announced

http://www.nme.com/news/paramore/26821


Coldplay break silence on new album. Chris Martin promises a song 'everybody has to hear'

Coldplay's Chris Martin has been discussing their new album - and has revealed the band have already worked on a song he wants everybody to hear.

Martin has said the follow up to 2005's 'X&Y' will see the band trying out new things.

The singer explained: "I think for a long time, people felt like we were a band in black and white, and now we feel like because we have this incredible job, now we can do whatever we like and try all kinds of new things."

The frontman said that the band were excited about one currently untitled track in particular, Yahoo News reports.

"In order for us to get excited about a new album, we have to have one song that we feel like everybody had to hear this song before we die, otherwise we'll be terribly depressed," he explained. "So luckily with this new record, we're going to make, we have that one song."

As previously reported, Brian Eno is set to produce the album which will be the first to be recorded in the band's purpose built studio in north London.

Meanwhile, Coldplay have just completed a tour of Latin America, which saw them play Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.

http://www.nme.com/news/coldplay/26819


The Pipettes sign US deal. Their debut album finally sees a Stateside release

The Pipettes have joined up with Interscope Records/Cherrytree to release their debut album Stateside later this year, a representative from the label confirmed today (February 27).

'We Are The Pipettes' was released in the UK last July and should finally hit American shores this summer.

As previously announced, the Brighton trio will be making their first tour of the US beginning next month, playing a sold-out date at New York's Bowery Ballroom on March 13 opening for Amy Winehouse.

They'll also play several showcases at Austin's South by Southwest Festival March 14-18. The band are expected to announce a Los Angeles date shortly.

http://www.nme.com/news/the-pipettes/26716


Tim Finn discusses new album. 'Imaginary Kingdom' tackles weighty subjects

Tim Finn will release his latest solo effort, 'Imaginary Kingdom', in the US on April 24.

The former member of Split Enz and honourary member of Crowded House was about to embark on a tour of the UK and Europe supporting the new album when he caught up with NME.COM.

"I was touring a lot with my brother Neil, and during the breaks in the tour, new songs just kept coming through. So I had 23 songs I started demoing," Finn explained.

Finn wrote most of the album in his native New Zealand, which he said had a distinct influence on its sound. "Gertrude Stein said, 'People are the way their land and sky is.' I think that's true. Most of my writing was influenced by New Zealand's land, light, air and water.

"I wanted to give people the feeling they get when stepping onto a beach," he said.

Finn said he wrote the song 'Salt To The Sea' for Split Enz and Crowded House former drummer Paul Hester, who took his own life in 2005 after battling with depression.

"'Salt To The Sea'' was very much a song for Paul," Finn said. "He lived in my house when I was away in England and we all miss him terribly.

"Each song has its own story, but it's mostly about the fact that the song is still leading me on. I love the form."

As previously announced, Finn will perform with his brother Neil as part of the newly reunited Crowded House at the Coachella Festival in Indio, California on April 29. He will soon announce the dates of a solo US spring tour.

http://www.nme.com/news/split-enz/26715


Linkin Park name new album. 'Minutes To Midnight' is released in May

Linkin Park are set to release their new album 'Minutes To Midnight' on May 14.

The album will be the first new material from the band since 2003's 'Meteora'.

Frontman Chester Bennington declared the LP would change the way people think about the band.

He said: "What people have known Linkin Park as, and how they will know them as when they first hear the album ... that's going to change. The way we've been classified, and how people think they know us, that's all going to die."

Speaking about the concept behind the album he told MTV News: "The title is a reference to the Doomsday Clock, which was created by these scientists at the University of Chicago after the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan to end World War II.

"Given the idea that mankind now had this ultimate destructive power, they were contemplating what the repercussions of this would be and the idea and the idea that the end of the world could be imminent."

Bennington also had high praise for the new track 'The Little Things You Give Away', saying it was "the pinnacle of what we can achieve as a band...(it will) touch people in a way Linkin Park haven't touched people before... It's a huge explosion of sound, over six minutes long, and it's truly, completely amazing. And I can't wait for people to hear it".

The album is co-produced by band member Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin.

A release date has yet to be confirmed.

http://www.nme.com/news/linkin-park/26884


Placebo release album on iTunes. Band's new covers album available in digital form.

Placebo have released an album of covers which is available on iTunes as of today (March 5).

The release, titled simply 'Covers', will coincide with the band's upcoming UK shows, beginning at the Blackpool Empress Ballroom on April 5.

Each of the ten covers that feature on the album have been performed live throughout the band's career, and will now be available in digital form for the first time.

The covers were only previously available on the limited edition bonus CD available with 2003's 'Sleeping With Ghosts' album.

This digital release follows the massive download demand of the band's cover of [a]Kate Bush[a]'s 'Running Up That Hill' after it featured on TV show 'The OC'.

The tracklisting is:

'Running Up That Hill
'Where Is My Mind'
'Bigmouth Strikes Again'
'Johnny and Mary'
'20th Century Boy'
'The Ballad of Melody Nelson'
'Holocaust'
'I Feel You'
'Daddy Cool'
'Jackie'

http://www.nme.com/news/placebo/26838


New Elliott Smith album on the way. The record features a whopping 24 tracks

A double CD to commemorate the music of introspective singer songwriter Elliott Smith will be released on May 8.

The album, which will feature 24 of his songs recorded between 1995 and 1997, will be entitled 'New Moon'.

A large amount of proceeds from sales of New Moon will go to Outside In, a Portland based organisation looking after homeless youths.

Smith was found dead in 2003 of an apparently self-inflicted stab wound to the heart.

The tracklisting for the album is:

Disc 1

'Angel In The Snow'
'High Times'
'New Monkey'
'Looking Over My Shoulder'
'Going Nowhere'
'Riot Coming'
'All Cleaned Out'
'First Timer'
'Go By'
'Miss Misery (early version)'
'Thirteen'

Disc 2

'Talking To Mary'
'Georgia Georgia'
'Whatever (Folk Song in C)'
'Big Decision'
'Placeholder'
'New Disaster'
'Seen How Things Are Hard'
'Fear City'
'Either/Or'
'Pretty Mary K (other version)'
'Almost Over'
'See You Later'
'Half Right'

http://www.nme.com/news/elliott-smith/26835


Velvet Revolver complete second album. Scott Weiland to release solo album too.

Velvet Revolver have announced details of their second album 'Libtertad'.

The follow up to 2004's 'Contraband' was produced by Brendan O'Brien, who worked with frontman Scott Weiland during his stint in Stone Temple Pilots.

Speaking about working with O'Brien, Weiland said: "He has really helped the guys challenge themselves on a musical level. ('Libertad') definitely still rocks, but it's incredibly more musical. There's a lot more textures, and Slash and Duff (McKagan) have really sort of risen the bar. It just goes places that the first album didn't go."

Weiland added the band want to work with The Clash legend Mick Jones too.

He said: "We wanted to work with him with Velvet Revolver, but we didn't get the chance to do it. So I'm thinking about getting a hold of him, working on a track or two."

Weiland is also finishing work on his solo album, which he hopes to released before the end of the year.

He told MTV News: "It kind of goes all over the map like the first one, but a bit more focused because I'm not using drugs anymore. It had a little bit of Latin jazz, some R&B oriented stuff, some stuff with beats. There's some stuff that's really kind of out there. I'm into creating sounds, but it's all about melody, really."

http://www.nme.com/news/velvet-revolver/26825

More Rock News 03 2007

R.E.M.: A 25-year rockin' role

By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

Radio Free Europe, R.E.M.'s 1981 debut single, heralded the birth of alternative rock and one of its most reputable champions. It also started the 25-year countdown to an inevitable induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The band, which formed 27 years ago in Athens, Ga., heads the 2007 class. It includes Van Halen, Patti Smith, The Ronettes and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. The ceremony airs live from the Waldorf-Astoria in New York at 8:30 p.m. ET Monday on VH1 Classic.

"We're notoriously bad at looking back," says singer Michael Stipe, 47. "It's nice when other people do it for you."

The night will be especially poignant for two reasons. First, drummer Bill Berry, who had a brain aneurysm in 1995 and quit in 1997 to become a farmer, will rejoin Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills on stage. Second, they'll be inducted alongside a longtime idol.

"This band wouldn't exist without Patti Smith," he says. "To be here the same year is an incredible thrill. She's an immense talent and a rare voice."

The jangle guitar-pop and enigmatic lyrics of R.E.M., a rare breed in the postpunk era, expanded from a college-radio sensation in the early '80s to a chart staple a decade later.

"We grew up in the public very slowly, and we stubbornly refused to do things that might have escalated our rise," Stipe says. Today, that strategy would result in "an immense struggle."

"The industry that was music is no longer," he says. "People are struggling to wrap their heads around the seismic shift that occurred when technology took this great leap."

Youth culture embraced the digital revolution and its myriad music applications, Stipe says, while labels saw it as a threat.

"Peter Buck always mentions the horse buggy whip factory and the feeling around the lunch table the day the automobile was introduced. That's the music industry, which is ripe for an immense recession. People either have their heads in the sand or they're trying to hold on to what still works and apply it to a completely new landscape."

The industry slump has not stifled creativity, says Stipe, waxing rhapsodic over the "incredible energy and unbelievable talent" he witnessed at a recent concert by Arcade Fire and Athens band Producto.

R.E.M.'s talent and energy have yet to flag, judging by persistent critical support, but sales have been less steady. Commercial strength peaked with 1991's Out of Time (4.5 million copies sold to date). Monster, released in 1994, was the last studio disc to reach platinum status, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Sales eroded over subsequent releases: 1996's New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 994,000; 1998's Up, 664,000; 2001's Reveal, 415,000; and 2004's Around the Sun, 232,000.

Stipe doesn't blame the slip on a dysfunctional industry. Nor does he fault the band.

"Anyone around as long as us goes through peaks and valleys," he says. "Music used to occupy a huge part of people's daily lives, when there were three TV networks and a handful of cable stations, and you didn't have computers and Xbox and good DVDs."

For R.E.M., music remains paramount. The band is crafting a new album, and canonization in a rock museum isn't accelerating retirement plans.

"I've never put much thought into how much longer we might go," Stipe says. "I just hope we know before anyone else when it's time to stop."


http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2007-03-07-REM-rock-hall_N.htm

and

Teenage Fanclub And Portastatic On Go-Betweens Tribute Album.

By: ChartAttack.com Staff

The Go-Betweens will be the subject of a tribute album featuring Teenage Fanclub, Portastatic, Trembling Blue Stars and members of The Church that's scheduled to come out later this year.

Although no official track list has been revealed for Love Goes On! A Tribute To Grant McLennan And The Go-Betweens, Long Beach, California label Rare Victory is putting songs for the compilation on its MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/rarevictory

The idea for the album was conceived in late November as a way to pay respect to the Australian band following the passing of Go-Betweens member Grant McLennan last May in Brisbane.

"There is no telling, really what to expect with tribute albums," the label wrote in late January. "These past weeks have been euphoric, as we at Rare Victory have seen the months of toil and efforts pay off in concrete terms, the artistry expanding in ways we could only anticipate."

Contributions started with a song from The Orchids, and The Clientele submitted "Orpheus Beach" a short time later. Glenn Bennie offered "Devil's Eye" from his GB3 side project, and Portastatic added "Bye Bye Pride." Other songs to be covered are "Haunted House" and "Apology Accepted." Additional performers on the album include The June Brides' Phil Wilson, The Saints' Ed Kuepper, The Bats and Brookville. Additional contributors are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

The Go-Betweens formed in 1978 and released their Send Me A Lullaby debut in 1981. The group, best known for their Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express and 16 Lovers Lane albums, originally disbanded in 1989. The group's core of McLennan and Robert Forster reunited in 2000 to release The Friends Of Rachel Worth. The band's last studio album was 2005's Oceans Apart. The Go-Betweens released a live CD/DVD package titled That Striped Sunlight Sound last year.

—Jason MacNeil

http://www.chartattack.com/damn/2007/02/1209.cfm

and

Aussie rockers are a howling success.

Hitting the right note … Brendan Picchio, Joel Stein and Juanita Stein from the Howling Bells at yesterday's nomination announcement.

Emily Dunn Entertainment Writer

Just 18 months ago Sydney band Howling Bells were in a London recording studio with Coldplay producer Ken Nelson, putting the finishing touches to their debut self-titled album.

The recording session came after almost nine months of waiting for Nelson to find the time to work with them.

"It was months of blood, sweat and tears. Everything we had went into this album," said lead singer Juanita Stein. "He had no idea that we had waited for so long, of the emotional frustration of it all."

The result not only wowed the British music press but made an impression back in Australia with the band nominated yesterday for the $25,000 Australian Music Prize, alongside musicians such as Augie March, Sarah Blasko and Bob Evans.

The prize, now in its second year, is awarded for the best album of last year and was established by music industry consultant Scott Murphy as an alternative to industry-dominated awards such as the ARIAs.

While the 2005 AMP shortlist included eight bands, this year Murphy decided to stretch it to nine. "We decided that all deserved to be part of the shortlist," Murphy said.

The 2005 AMP winners, the Drones, were also nominated for the 2006 prize yesterday for their second album, Gala Mill.

Gareth Liddiard, lead singer of the Drones, said winning the 2005 award not only helped them pay off debts and buy new gear, but also provided "about $40,000 in publicity".

"Our guitars broke the first gig we played after we won the award. We were still waiting for the cheque to clear," Liddiard said. "Everyone wanted us to throw a huge party but we had to pay the bills."

Glenn Richards from the Melbourne band Augie March, whose song One Crowded Hour came first in the Hottest 100 on radio station Triple J, said the award was important because it was judged by music peers. "When you make an album you want people to listen to it and buy it, everything else is a bonus," he said.

When the winner is announced on March 7, the Howling Bells will be back in Britain for a headlining tour, having finished an Australian tour supporting the Glaswegian band, Snow Patrol. "Because we spent so much time there we have more of a presence," Stein said. "But Australia is always our spiritual home."

Link

and

Nasty, brutish and surprisingly resilient. The Stooges' second life.

It looks like something out of a fairy tale—the quaint, forest-sequestered cottage on the edge of Miami's colorful Little Haiti neighborhood, with a walkway so long and winding it'd confound Hansel and Gretel. But there's no dainty Disney princess waltzing around inside. You've stumbled upon the current lair of one of rockdom's grumpiest ogres, notorious Stooges leader Iggy Pop. There's no warm and fuzzy welcome mat at his door—in fact, you'd be well advised to get your trespassing ass off his private property. Now. "I don't do a gate, but there's this big hedge, which sets a certain tone—it's a hint," growls Iggy in his unmistakable Big Bad Wolf voice.

Iggy has a fable or two of his own to relate. As he tells it, only two brave souls have ever dared to breach the perimeter, one a yuppie real-estate shill, and the other "this young black man in a poorly fitting white dress shirt and slacks … [He] stopped in front of my drive, and then determinedly walked right up to my door and knocked. And I thought `Wellll… OK,' and said hello. He had a gigantic scar, must've been a knife scar, the length of his throat, so he'd been around. And he was selling magazines, door-to-door, as they used to back in the day.

"And I would never, ever give somebody like that the time of day," continues the artist born James Osterberg, who—at 59—has been around a bit himself. "But ya know what? My heart went out to him. He told me he was just out of prison and he was being rehabbed and he was doing this and could I help him out." In a moment of weakness, Iggy paid cash for a subscription to Art And Architecture, then watched his mailbox for the mag, month after month. "And I started to think `That sonofabitch!' But then it came, ya know? And I said `Yes!' And now I think of that guy every month when I get my Art And Architecture—it kinda restored my faith."

Faith that—judging by The Weirdness, Iggy's fanged, feral new slugfest with the original Stooges (guitarist Ron Asheton and his drumming brother Scott)—has been in unusually short supply.

STILL ANGRY

This iconoclast should be content. In his rakish 38-year career, he presaged the punk movement with stellar Stooges albums like Fun House (1970) and Raw Power (1973); was rescued from heroin addiction by David Bowie, who presided over his two landmark '77 solo sets The Idiot and Lust For Life; and went on to become an in-demand character actor in films like Cry-Baby, Dead Man and the TV series The Adventures Of Pete & Pete. (His next gig? A voiceover as the revolutionary uncle in an animated adaptation of graphic novel Persepolis).

But Iggy still doesn't sound at ease on record. The Steve Albini-produced Weirdness reads like a study in antisocial misanthropy. The album's scruffy, squealing mix—thanks to the low-budget Shure mic Iggy chose over a pricey Neumann—puts his blunt vocals up front and in your face. "I should believe in human nature, but I don't," the singer snaps over stadium-huge drums in "You Can't Have Friends." And the deeper you descend into this ogre's den, the darker it gets. "I'm the kinda guy who don't pick up the phone," Iggy drawls in the stomping "Free & Freaky," which defends his curious habit of "walking all alone in a bathrobe in the park" (i.e., the woodsy expanse behind his cottage. He explains: "It's my own park and I'll do what the hell I want."). Over the handclap percussion and ragged Asheton riff of "Greedy Awful People," he sneers at conservative society and admits, "I can't live among my class." But he reserves his harshest barbs for the deceptively shout-a-long "My Idea Of Fun," which builds verses like "I hate mankind" into the walloping chorus of "My idea of fun / Is killing everyone."

Other Weirdness cuts may be less strident: "ATM" marvels at the royalties its composer continues to receive for such oft-covered classics as "Tonight," "China Girl," "Real Wild Child" and the enduring "Lust For Life"; "The End Of Christianity" celebrates his relationship with Nina, a woman he met at a Miami Beach pizza parlor a few years back. "I'm trying to think—No, I don't have anything positive on there, they're all negative, those lyrics," cackles Iggy, kicking off his boots and curling his wiry, muscular frame into a booth in the café of his Hollywood hotel. The magazine hawker aside, Iggy has judged today's self-centered civilization and found it wanting. "So the songs mean what they say, and nobody, I mean nobody, is nice."

TRUST NO ONE

Ron Asheton—who'd been punching the axeman clock in Destroy All Monsters and Dark Carnival before he was stunned by Iggy's call—sees it the same cynical way. "When I write a piece of music, I always have something in mind, some kinda theme, a certain feeling," he notes in a separate chat. "So I'm always wondering what Iggy's gonna come up with. But with this album, it was always right, always something where I'm going `Yes!' It's my same general feeling—I've been kicked around for ages in this business, and all my friends have four legs; my pet cats that I trust more than anything walking on two."

The Stooges reunion saga began in 2003, when Iggy phoned the Ashetons at the same Michigan number they've had for decades and recruited them for four tracks on Skull Ring, his last solo salvo. It clicked well enough for the lineup—with Mike Watt filling in on bass for the late Dave Alexander—to bow at that year's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California and steal the show in the process. With original saxophonist Steve Mackay on board, The Stooges mark II began piecemeal work on The Weirdness, hooking up for five-day writing/demo stints, Iggy recalls, "Once every three or four months for three years. Ron had a little amp as big as a toaster oven, I sang through something about the size of a microwave, Scotty played a toy kit, and I recorded the whole thing on a mini-disc. So when we went in the studio, the songs were all written, arranged, rehearsed and ready to go." Though, with one key exception: the Mackay-punctuated "Passing Cloud," which was improvised on the spot.

"It comes directly from my loving to look at the clouds in Miami," elaborates Iggy, who says he always feels two beautiful reactions when he comes off the road: "One of 'em is—as the plane starts coming down through those big, puffy Miami clouds—I just start grinning, because it's this diffuse and forgiving light, like cotton candy. And I like it. And then when I get near my cottage and see the 'hood, I just relax and smile. Everyone's walking a little slower and dressing a little brighter than in the other parts of the city."

Albini's ball-peen hammer mix captures The Stooges at their retro best, believes Asheton, who nervously shivered all the way to Coachella, only to walk off stage rejuvenated. "That raw and simple sound? That's basically exactly what we are anyway. We're not refined, we don't wanna be overproduced—that's just how we play, and Steve understood that."

As his 60th birthday approaches this April, Iggy confesses he's looking back and cracking a smirk. Two film scripts about his life—as yet unauthorized—are floating around, Penelope Spheeris' Stooge-centered Search And Destroy, and Nick Gomez's The Passenger with Elijah Wood possibly playing the ol' Iguana. Thoughts of legacy, he concludes, "might come more into play now that I finally got this record made, because somehow I felt this was unfinished business. But we got the band up and running again, and sorta like Ahab, I think I managed to get my whale."

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and

Sebadoh: Happily United.

Cassette-lovin' trio reunites to avenge the 'fried shit'of the MySpace generation.

By Hannah Levin

Much like their slyly sarcastic peers in Pavement and Guided by Voices, Sebadoh made an underground name for themselves in the early '90s with their prolific output of genre-surfing, punk-minded material. Typically using minimalist, analog methods of recording, the trio attracted a devoted underground following. Though they initially delivered their work via the small but influential cult label Homestead Records, their work was especially fruitful between 1992 and 1994, while the band was signed to Sub Pop. It was during this period that the trio of Lou Barlow, Eric Gaffney, and Jason Loewenstein recorded what are arguably the two best records of their career, Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock and Bubble and Scrape.

As all too often happens after a band's creative high point, personal conflicts shattered the partnership originally forged by Gaffney and Barlow. Gaffney left in late '93, and though Barlow and Loewenstein went on to achieve more commercial success with the more accessible, pop-oriented sounds of records like Bakesale and Harmacy, it is the early work with Gaffney that retains significance with many fans. Thanks to contact initiated by working on a reissue of their 1991 release, Sebadoh III, they recently decided to re-form the band's original lineup and tour with a focus on that beloved older material. Despite scattered schedules and geographical locales, I managed to squeeze in interview time with all three members.

Seattle Weekly: A great deal of your early sound seemed to be built upon the willful dichotomy of placing Lou's softer side next to Eric's more caustic barrages. Was that a happy accident or a deliberate juxtaposition?

Eric Gaffney: The Freed Man, our first record and our next reissue [out on Domino Records in April], is largely acoustic-based, and shows my early songwriting to be the variety show it is—albeit on the softer side—with quieter songs mixed with electric, noise, and experimental sides. I can't pigeonhole my style or sound, and there was never any thought of presenting ourselves as the quiet one and the loud one.

Lou Barlow: I have always liked the idea of throwing all kinds of material together. "Cohesive" was a code word for "boring" to me. In 1981, the Meat Puppets released a 7-inch that had quiet, country-esque instrumentals next to the most insane thrash punk—and it made perfect sense to me as a 13-year-old. That, along with a love of the Beatles and the multiple songwriters/White Album vibe, was what we drew inspiration from. The point was to first make something that would be interesting to us and start the band as an evolving collective: no leader, no dominating style.

Since you're often held up as poster children for the so-called "lo-fi movement" of the early '90s, I'm wondering how your views on recording and production techniques have evolved over the years. Were inexpensive recording methods more of a default choice because of low budgets or a creative decision to make things sound more bare bones? If you had unlimited funds, do you think you would have made dramatically different records?

Barlow: There was no choice. Not only did we not have money to record in studios, but maintaining an organic sound true to what we wanted to hear (i.e., crickets, cars passing, tape distortion) was virtually impossible in a studio back then. Especially as a 20-year-old punk rocker with no knowledge of advanced technology and no social skills to explain yourself to the older, mostly intolerant rock 'n' rollers that ran studios. Having grown up listening to all mutations of punk and new wave (Sex Pistols to PiL, Swell Maps, Young Marble Giants, hardcore thrash), it was clear that there were no rules other than "be honest." And honesty is easiest when I am someplace I feel reasonably comfortable.

Gaffney: Hmmm. Both, I suppose. We had no money, but we had tape recorders and four-tracks and cassettes. When we could afford studio time, we did that, too. Sure, cassette quality and feel is appealing sometimes; so is reel-to-reel. If we had big money budgets early on, it wouldn't have been what it was. Spending a lot of money in a studio does not equate to a great record. The song, sound, tone, and performance are what counts.

You were so heavily involved with cassette recordings and methods of delivering your art that are now considered wildly primitive by MySpace standards. How do you feel about the impact of digital technology and culture on punk and indie rock?

Jason Loewenstein: I understand why cassettes seem "wildly primitive" in some senses. But I am immediately struck with the idea that MySpace is modern in its networking and distribution capabilities, but the sound of the music has taken profound steps backward in quality. You would have to really intentionally make something go terribly wrong on a cassette multitrack recording to make it sound as bad as the warbly, compressed, pinched, thin-sounding underwater crap sound of a sound file played through the MySpace file compression engine. MySpace is a needle-in-a-haystack kind of way to find new music, and then even if you do find something, it really sounds like fried shit.

Barlow: But the great thing about it is that we have been given the means to express ourselves. Technology is cheaper; the Web is mostly free. It's brought me full circle—I have a Web site that I have built and maintain. I do whatever I want with it, and it feels a whole lot like going down to the copy shop, cutting tape covers, and selling them in a shoebox at the record store in town.

What made you decide to reunite in your original form? What are some songs that fans can look forward to hearing live?

Loewenstein: I think this is just born out of the new communication between Lou and Eric and I that was necessary for us to get these reissued albums together. Any communication at all was enough for us to entertain the idea of getting back together and seeing what happened. We did that, and it feels right and sounds right. We are concentrating heavily on stuff from the earliest Sebadoh up until Eric's departure, though Lou and I are throwing in some stuff from later records. This is going to be a trip!

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2007-02-28/music/sebadoh-happily-united.php

Actors & Singers

OSCAR'S ROCKERS

YOU would think that one lucrative career bringing fame and fortune would satisfy anyone. But for many stars, the adulation of movie fans is not enough. Jared Leto, 35, who starred in Alexander and Fight Club, hits the charts today with A Beautiful Lie, the second album from his band 30 Seconds To Mars. Unlike most of his fellow actors turned-singers, Leto tries to play down his fame and refuses to talk Hollywood when discussing the band. And they're pretty good. Their new album has sold a million copies in the US and is set to cash in on the demand for rock bands such as My Chemical Romance in the UK.

Here, MICKEY McMONAGLE looks at some other big names who have tried to conquer the pop world.

JULIETTE LEWIS

JULIETTE, 33, was the darling of Hollywood's seamier side, starring in movies such as Natural Born Killers, Kalifornia and Cape Fear, before she launched her band Juliette And The Licks. With two well-received albums under their belt, the hard-working group are also a big hit on tour.

RUSSELL CROWE

HOLLYWOOD hardman Crowe, 42, was a bill-topper in Gladiator but he really wants to be a rock star - and keeps failing. He started out by calling himself Rus Le Roq before singing for an Aussie pub group, 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts, for 12 years. He now fronts The Ordinary Fear Of God.

LINDSAY LOHAN

THE party girl, 20, is a successful actress with lead roles in movies such as The Parent Trap and Mean Girls but also wants chart success. She released her debut album Speak in 2004 to a great response but follow-up A Little More Personal was panned and her third, due last year, isn't out yet.

ROBERT DOWNEY JR.

DOWNEY, 41, has fitted an attempt at a singing career in between hit movie roles and getting arrested. After drink and drug addictions, the Ally McBeal star cleaned up his act and released album The Futurist in 2004, impressing Duran Duran so much they invited him to support them on tour.

KYLIE MINOGUE

Role model for all soapstars-turned wannabe-popsters, Kylie went from playing a teenage mechanic in Neighbours to having chart success around the world. Gold hotpants, good moves and catchy tunes propelled the hugely popular 38-year-old Aussie to the top.

BILLY BOYD

ONE of Scotland's most successful exports in recent years, Boyd, 38, shot to fame through his role as Pippin in The Lord Of The Rings movies. He is lead singer and songwriter in his band Beecake, named after a picture of a bee-covered cake sent to him by fellow hobbit Dominic Monaghan.

KEANU REEVES

REEVES, 42, is the star of hit films such as Speed and The Matrix. But he has always fancied himself as a rocker. The Point Break actor played T in the Park in the mid-90s with his band Dogstar then played bass in new band Becky. But last year said he was packing in music.

HILARY DUFF

HILARY, 19, starred in US TV show Lizzie McGuire and went on to get top roles in movies such as The Perfect Man and Material Girls. She has had four big-selling albums in the US. On the last, Most Wanted, she tried a new rock direction encouraged by boyfriend Joel Madden of band Good Charlotte.

BRITTANY MURPHY

ALREADY a huge movie star thanks to films such as Clueless, Don't Say A Word and 8 Mile, the singing talent of Brittany, 29, was spotted by dance producer Paul Oakenfold then showcased on their hit Faster Kill Pussycat. She is now working on her debut album.

ASHLEE SIMPSON

THERE is more to Ashlee, 22, than being the younger sister of former Newlywed Jessica. An acting career was iced as she turned her attention to music and hit No.1 in the US with debut album Autobiography in 2004. The hits kept coming and now she is working on a new album.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON

Widely regarded as one of Hollywood's sexiest stars, Scarlett, 22, won critical acclaim with roles in Lost In Translation and Girl With A Pearl Earring. She also has the music in her and is working on an album of Tom Waits covers.

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Let me see... they forgot Toni Collette (and The Finish), Michael Pitt, Kevin Bacon and his bro, Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kily, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Megan Mullally, Julie Delpy, Lalaine and lots of other actor/actresses...