Nick Cave: Grinderman are 'over'

Nick Cave has ended Grinderman's latest tour by announcing that the band is "over". The group played their final show on Saturday night, at the Meredith music festival in Victoria, Australia.

For their last gig, the hirsute quartet played to 12,000 people at the outdoor festival, gnashing and snarling through their headlining set. But then at the end came the news: "That's it for Grinderman," Cave growled, according to the Vine. "It's over … See you all in another 10 years when we'll be even older and uglier."
In some ways this isn't a surprise. Grinderman were always a side project, formed by Cave and three other Bad Seeds. Although they released two albums, in 2007 and 2010, Cave has completed one Bad Seeds LP and at least four movie soundtracks in the same period. Grinderman violinist Warren Ellis will soon release his eighth album with the Dirty Three. "There [will] be no Grinderman 3," Cave told Mojo magazine in October. "We're shutting it down."

Cave's next project is thought to be the Bad Seeds' 15th studio album, the follow-up to 2007's Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! "We're quite excited about [it]," said Jim Sclavunos, drummer for the Bad Seeds and Grinderman, in a January interview. "This'll be the first time the Bad Seeds exist as a wholly different band than they were when they started. Nick's the only remaining person from the original lineup." Bad Seeds co-founder Mick Harvey left the group in 2009.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/dec/12/nick-cave-grinderman?newsfeed=true

Grinderman Split: Big Jim Speaks
The Quietus , December 16th, 2011 10:41

"I don't think there should be mourning or rending of garments just yet" says Sclavunos

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!"