Electric Picnic Preview: Top Seed

The new album is a collection that very much echoes Bad Seeds’ aesthetic as well as exhibiting an appreciation of old school rogue male songwriters such as Lee Hazlewood and Hank Williams.
“I think a lot of the Bad Seeds have similar tastes mixed up together, which brings with it an understanding of playing together and working off one another,” Harvey explains. “I mean, the Bad Seeds are a very unusual group. Not anyone can just kind of walk in there. There’s quite an understanding of not falling into genre traps and of creating an atmosphere that we’re looking for. It’s very hard whenever we’ve needed to find members for the band. Polly Harvey’s actually very like that too, she really needs people to work off, she couldn’t just play with session people.”
Among its many highlights, Harvey’s album features a beguiling version of the Cave tune ‘Come Into My Sleep’, one of the nuggets included on the recent Bad Seeds B-Sides & Rarities collection, and now reinstated in the band’s live set.
“We actually resurrected ‘Come Into My Sleep’ as an encore on the Australian dates with the gospel singers going off, and it sounds a bit like the Stones or something,” Harvey enthuses. “Actually, occasionally it was like ‘Rocks Off’ period Primal Scream. God bless their cotton socks!”
Given the expansion of the Bad Seeds line-up to include those aforementioned London Community Gospel Choir members, it sounds like the Electric Picnic set will be quite a blast.
“I hope so. We should be in some kind of form. I heard Primal Scream might be on the bill actually. I like Bobbie... I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I like him!”