As we reported on Sunday, last weekend Nick Cave announced the end of Grinderman onstage at a music festival in Victoria. The band haven’t issued an official statement as to the reasons behind the split, but drummer and gent Jim Sclavunos has spoken to Faster Louder with some more information.
Sclavunos told the website that the Australian gigs were always intended to be Grinderman’s last, saying it was "time to move on". He added that "What happened at Meredith was more a bye-bye than an announcement. An announcement would be like a press release but who knows what will happen in five or 10 years time. My crystal ball is a bit low on batteries at the moment so I can’t predict what the future of Grinderman is – if there is a future. The way I see it is it’s kind of our prerogative as musicians to do whatever we think is the right thing at the time and also to change our minds as we see fit."
Fans of Messrs. Casey, Cave, Ellis and Sclavunos can be relieved, though, that the Grinderman split should lead to new material from The Bad Seeds. "We have kind of neglected Bad Seeds of late," Sclavunos said. "It’s been about four years since we have done anything and I think it’s high time we made some beautiful music together, again."
And for those of you who love classic album reformation tour type deals, there’s a tease too: "Grinderman was one of my favourite bands to play with and yes I’m sad to see it go, but there’s always the prospect of the dreaded come back tour!"
