Nick Cave says speaking for everyone is Thom Yorke's job

Nick Cave, in an interview in today's Scotsman ahead of the Bad Seeds' 14th album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, says he could never be a voice for the public the way Thom Yorke is. I'm like the friend it's fun to go out with but don't tell your problems to. You tell them to Thom Yorke.²

Cave is a big fan of Kid A, but he keeps Yorke's apocalyptic view of the world apart from his own. His, he claims playfully, is better put into words, but it carries no wisdom and he would not urge it on anyone. That's Thom's job: he's speaking for 'us'. I'm not. I never had that talent.²

He has no wish to unite a crowd either, and on stage feels more like a spectacle. Ten minutes before a show he stands at the side of the stage with nerves, aches and a sense of inadequacy, until something shifts and he feels godlike.

The new album, out on Mute on 3 March, is full of odd words, “myxomatoid” among them, and Cave has since learned he was not the first to get there. I'm now told that Radiohead have a song called Myxomatosis², he says, a little disappointed. It is on Hail to the Thief, from 2003.