NICK Cave And The Bad Seeds released their 14th studio album Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! this week. The Australian musician tells all about the album and how it took shape and why he's fed up of talking about religion.

By Rory Dollard

WITHIN minutes of our interview starting, Nick Cave has landed a potentially lethal blow.

"I don't really want to talk about that. Ask me something else. I'm sorry but I just can't be bothered ... don't you have something else?"

The man whose career has been carved into two distinct parts - the fire and brimstone Old-Testament punk and the New Testament-referencing balladeer, who came to light on 1997's The Boatman's Call - doesn't want to talk about religion.

Like Maradona demanding not to be quizzed on handball or Sean Connery politely requesting you not to mention 007, it's a disconcerting moment.

But, as with those others, there are plenty more strings to the Australian's bow.

Yes, new album Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!! relies upon a Bible story for its lyrical hook. Yes, it includes a track named We Call Upon The Author, which reads like an impassioned interrogation of the Creator. And yes, one of Cave's best-loved songs, Into My Arms, starts with the knockout line, "I don't believe in an interventionist God".

But, perhaps having had his personal beliefs grilled once too often, today the UK resident is more eager to talk about the music.

Having stripped down his usual contingent of Bad Seeds - his multi-national backing band - to its bones for last year's primal, rock and roll tear-up Grinderman, Cave was eager to take his work in yet another new direction this year.

And, with around 35 years in the music industry under his belt, he concedes innovation needs to be given a gentle nudge these days.

"Lazarus feels more like an important Bad Seeds record to me," says Cave.

"But Grinderman is in there. I did Grinderman for all sorts of reasons and one of those 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 sterling double set, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus) and we did certain things musically that made that inevitable.

"I didn't play any piano on the album, Warren (Ellis, violinist) 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."

The result is an album with a lightness of touch not always associated with Cave's work.

While he has always been darkly humorous and witty with words, the band have never sounded as playful and funky as they do in 2008.

At times, on the groove-heavy Today's Lesson or the rhythmic loop of Night Of The Lotus Eaters, you can already picture Cave pulling out some of his angular, snake-hip dance moves.

One thing fans may not see as much of any time soon is Cave's guitar playing, brought out of hibernation in 2006 on a handful of solo shows and then installed as the focal point of Grinderman's raw, visceral style. He insists that while he plays a lot while writing, there is a Bad Seeds pecking order to respect on the road.

"I don't know if they'll let me," he says with perfect comic timing and just a hint of genuine regret.

"Mick's there so he plays guitar. I do play all the time though, not so much on record but I sit at my desk and hammer away at it a lot.

"It's important to try and write on other instruments - you get things that sound new and different. If I sit down at the piano, a certain kind of song comes out. I've been playing the thing for I don't know how long and when I do, I write specific types of song."

His reluctance to channel those instincts may disappoint those who hold The Boatman's Call - a crushingly personal record of hushed confessionals and mournful love songs - as his finest work but as a writer Cave is eager to break new ground.

"Those songs do still come to me but I just don't use them," he explains.

He is, perhaps, eager not to sacrifice his image as a goth's last (only?) great poet for an album of schmaltz, despite his "other life" as a happily married family man, based in Hove.

Cave the songwriter, it seems, is destined to inhabit a much less comfortable existence.

"Will I ever make another album like The Boatman's Call? Who knows what's going to happen? I just want to try some different things. I actually wrote a lot of those kind of things for Lazarus but they were ballads and I didn't want to make another album of ballads."

He warms to his point with unexpected gusto.

"So I don't pursue the idea and they go in the garbage bin ... where they belong!"

He roars with deep, growly laughter, relishing the hint of malevolence.

In addition to maintaining a manic release schedule - and, of course, throwing any number of stone-cold classics into the bin - the singer has increasingly been turning his hand to other projects.

Having already dabbled in the movies with an appearance in Ghosts Of The Civil Dead and written a novel, 1989's And The Ass Saw The Angel, he has recently upped the ante.

First came his gloriously desolate script for gritty outback western, The Proposition, followed by a moody soundtrack, in conjunction with Ellis, for last year's Brad Pitt vehicle, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford.

"On The Proposition I wrote the script and then I came back and did the music at the end, so all the stuff in the middle - the real work - I had very little to do with," he says, eulogising on his new favourite art form.

"I've been asked to write untold screenplays since then but I've refused most of them. I have, though, written another for John Hillcoat (director of The Proposition). He wanted me to write him a small English film, something quick before he went to Hollywood to make the big American film.

"As it turned out, it was more difficult to get the money together for the small English film so he's over in the States making Cormac McCarthy's last novel, The Road."

How did he find writing about his adopted country - one of several he has taken over the years, having also spent time in Germany and Brazil, as well as his native Victoria, Australia?

"I don't see that I need to be integrated to write about it. I'm an acute observer of things and I'm always watching the way you English people behave."

And the verdict is? "It's a total outrage," he says, again revelling in the role of misanthrope.

"I think I'll head off to Thailand one day."

Cave's thirst for pushing boundaries, be it by dipping his toes into movie-making, employing a violinist who is forbidden from playing the instrument or planning to ditch Brighton for Bangkok, means he is not an artist given to bouts of nostalgia.

But, at 50, and with a retrospective box set and an induction into the Australian Hall Of Fame behind him, he 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, somewhat 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. I would hate to be judged on that."

Name: Nicholas Edward Cave

Age: 50

Significant other: Married to British model, Susie Bick. They have two children. Cave has two other children from other relationships.

Career high: Where The Wild Roses Grow, the duet he recorded with Kylie Minogue in 1995 - it's his most successful single to date.

Career low: The heroin addiction and alcoholism that dogged his early career.

Famous for: The bleak imagery he uses in his songs.

Words of wisdom: "I'm a believer. I don't go to church. I don't belong to any particular religion but I do believe in God. I couldn't write what I write about and be creative without a certain form of belief."