Grinderman: Martyn Casey

Good morning Martyn, how are you today?
Actually I'm a bit spaced out, I just got here [to Brighton] from Australia, so I don't think I'll be much cop I'm afraid.

That's quite alright, we'll keep it simple and straightforward. Question one, what is the whole purpose of your existence?
Pardon?

Sorry, I meant Grinderman. You've got a perfectly decent outfit together as The Bad Seeds, so why does Grinderman exist?
I think it gives us an opportunity to explore other kinds of music. With The Bad Seeds; I don't know why but because there are more people it tends to conform to 'what it is'? It's been going for such a long time that it has this particular sound, whereas with just the four of us it's easier to go down avenues The Bad Seeds wouldn't.

Do you have any specific rules of engagement? A specific sound you're going for or is there anything you deliberately leave out?
That's the thing, there aren't any rules of engagement. It just comes from us just playing together in a room...and, let's just say there are just hours and hours and hours of basically fucking rubbish that we've done, and we just sort of winkle out the good bits and form something from that.

Would it be fair to say that Grinderman seem more 'raw' than The Bad Seeds ever are?
I don't know. So far, so far that seems to be what we end up with but I don't think we're deliberately trying to be 'in your face', we just end up making a lot of fucking noise basically.

A lot of noise, fair enough. Doesn't drown out the overtly sexual lyrics, now does it?
Erm, I guess that's Nick's problem.

Is it actually a problem?
God yeah, or so it seems. Reading between the lines...I don't know...(laughs) maybe he's got some issues there (chuckles again). Yeah, how about you ask him?

I might just do that.
Yeah, just go: 'Hey Nick, what's up with your sex life?

Ahem, is the dynamic different when playing with Grinderman as opposed to The Bad Seeds?
No disrespect to The Bad Seeds but there's more room to move and the irony is that it's kind of simpler as well. With The Bad Seeds it's sometimes like an elephant or a fucking brontosaurus or something which just lumbers into the room. With Grinderman, there's more room to move and more room to hear. With the Bad Seeds you're trying not to step on other people's toes and make some room for all these different instruments which can be restrictive. With the four of us, there's just more life or something. You're not so restricted with Grinderman and we're trying to find something different to play, not so maudlin or gloomy.

Gloomy though The Bad Seeds output can be, I always thought there was a sense of humour behind it?
Oh yeah, of course! But there's genuine gloom there as well though, I think. That's where a lot of the humour comes from actually. If you didn't laugh you'd have to top yourself or something.

So Grinderman is more fun then? Do you guys ever tire of being in each other's company all the time?
It is more fun, yes. To tell the truth we haven't done much together over the past six months, we've had a bit of a layoff to work on other things. [[[Even I was getting sick of looking at Nick's ugly face in the paper all the time]]]. We're all raring to go now, well I am anyway.