genre rock
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Ronnie Platt is on the road to recovery after undergoing surgery to treat his thyroid cancer. The Kansas frontman revealed Friday (March 7) that he is currently back home after an operation that went smoothly, writing in a post on Facebook, “The Doctor said my surgery couldn’t have gone any better!!!”
“I felt the power of everyone’s prayers and positive energy!” he continued in the message. “You all have helped me thru this, how do I? or can I? ever thank all of you for that!!!???? Day 1 of recovery here I am!!!”
Platt went on to say that he’s now “looking forward to getting back to what i do best!” “Yes, Singing, but my true job is entertaining you all and helping you at least for a couple hours forget [about] your problems and recharge your batteries,” he added. “I take a lot of pride in that!!!!”
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The musician’s update comes about three weeks after he first revealed that he’d been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. “Before everyone gets all excited, it has a 99% survival rate, it has not spread,” Platt wrote on Facebook at the time. “It’s contained to my thyroid. I just have to have my thyroid removed. Go through some rehab time and be right back in the saddle.”
He added, “As it has been put to me, this is just a bump in the road and will be behind me very soon! So everyone please CARRY ON!”
Platt took over as the lead singer of Kansas back in 2014, replacing former frontman Steve Walsh. He’s since carried vocals on the band’s most recent albums: 2016’s The Prelude Implicit and 2020’s The Absence of Presence, both of which entered the Top Rock Albums chart.
The singer also recently celebrated his 65th birthday, an occasion he marked with an introspective Facebook post on Feb. 25. “As I sit here and try to think of something eloquent to write, It’s just simply impossible to convey in any words my thanks to everyone that not only reached out for my birthday but also have sent me well wishes and positive energy and prayers helping me on my path of recovery,” he wrote.
“People I have never met, going above and beyond the call of duty to help me thru this with lightning speed! How are these people even able to walk with hearts so big???” he added. “Thank you for all the nice words and encouragement! I have plans on being back with my KANSAS family (YES FANS ARE FAMILY TOO!!!) very soon!!!”
She may not have put on those blue suede shoes, but she sure had the Presley hair down pat.
Benmont Tench says that “life” is the reason for the 11-year gap between his two solo albums.
With The Melancholy Season out Friday (March 7), the keyboardist says that a heavy work load with both Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Mudcrutch kept him busy during the interim (both groups toured and released what turned out to be their final albums in the period). A nearly decade-long battle with oral cancer (which included jaw reconstruction during 2023), Petty’s death in 2017, and the birth of Tench’s first daughter, Catherine, shortly after that — not to mention the pandemic — also contributed to the gap between works.
“Life got in the way of making another record,” Tench, 71, tells Billboard via Zoom from his home in Los Feliz, Calif. Already an A-list session player, he also filled some of the time after Petty’s passing playing for Ringo Starr, Jenny Lewis, Chris Stapleton, the Who and the Rolling Stones and was recently part of the Life Is a Carnival all-star tribute tour to The Band. “I would love to have made it sooner,” he says of The Melancholy Season. But, with the benefit of some perspective, he’s glad he didn’t.
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“I made a better record because I didn’t make it right away,” explains Tench, who had much of album’s songs written by, he estimates, the end of 2018 and recorded it with producer Jonathan Wilson (Dawes, Father John Misty, Margo Price) during 2020 and 2021. Unlike 2014’s Glyn Johns-produced You Should Be So Lucky, which was recorded in just 13 days, Tench lived with The Melancholy Season — to its benefit, he feels.
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“I kept fine-tuning and thinking, ‘oh no, no, no, that’s all wrong. It should be this,’” he explains. “It was great to have that opportunity. I could sit with the imagery in some songs and I could check to make sure that I said things the way I wanted do.”
The Melancholy Season’s 13 songs — whether the elegiac title track or the stripped-down “Under the Starlight,” the striding, boogie-styled “Rattle” or the more dramatically arranged “Pledge” and “The Drivin’ Man” — all share a spare and spacious sensibility. The songs are played mostly by Tench, Wilson on guitars and drums and Sebastian Steinberg on bass, with appearances by Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith and Jenny O and, on the closing track “Dallas,” Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins, who was part of the musical community at Los Angeles’ Largo that Tench has frequented.
“I like records with a lot of space,” says Tench, citing a lesson he learned from original Heartbreakers producer Denny Cordell while making the band’s first two albums during the ‘70s. “Denny said early on that a record is louder if it has fewer instruments. A song like ‘Breakdown’ has more layers than you would think, but the essence of the song is the guitar riff and the Wurlitzer (piano) riff. There are other layers, but there’s a lot of room in ‘Breakdown.’” Additionally, Tench says he was “profoundly affected” by Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding and John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band albums. “Each of those is, for the most part, three musicians and three instruments,” Tench explains. “They’re just a songwriter with the instruments he wrote the songs on, plus bass and drums, and they are complete.
“I think it’s great if you have a wall of sound and you do it well. There are fantastic records that use a lot of instruments; the Beatles did a lot of those. There’s Motown, of course. There’s what Brian (Wilson) did, what Phil Spector did… All of these things, and they’re wonderful. But there’s also a way to use fewer instruments and be just as effective. That’s what we did on this record; there were some songs we cut with more (instrumentation) and pulled them back to make (the songs) better.”
Tench dipped into his deeper past for a couple tracks, too. “Wobbles” was an instrumental on You Should Be So Lucky, which Tench sub-titled “Trio with Vocal Arrangement” for the new album. “Under the Starlight,” meanwhile, dates back a good 20 years to a Nashville songwriting session with Don Henry and was never released.
“I dug it and we set it aside and I went home, and years went by and I didn’t think about it,” Tench says. “And then maybe eight years ago I went, ‘What about “Under the Starlight”?’ And I didn’t want to bother Don, so I thought, ‘Lemme see if some words come up.’ I had a whisper of an inkling of what I wanted to talk about that I understood better ’cause I’ve lived a lot longer and been through a lot more and began to see how to do it.
“I got in touch with Don Henry and said, ‘Hey, I finished that song we started.’ He said, ‘That’s nice, but what do you mean finished? We finished it that day.’ (laughs) We wrote the complete song and I spaced out somehow. He sent me the lyrics that we’d originally finished and they were really good, but they made a different point. I hope somebody records it that, way, too.”
The Melancholy Season is being released by Dark Horse Records, the label the late George Harrison started in 1974 and that’s being continued by his widow, Olivia, and son Dhani. “It means a hell of a lot,” notes Tench, a teenage Beatles fan who met Harrison (who worked with Petty in the Traveling Wilburys) several times. “It’s got his vibe and it’s got their vibe, which is like amplifying George’s vibe. For them to believe in this record and want to put it out means quite a lot to me. I’ve had a blessed life in a million ways — and I intend to keep it going.”
That includes on the road as well. Tench previewed The Melancholy Season during a solo residency at the Cafe Carlyle in New York last month, and he has West Coast dates starting March 12. He hopes to hit more of the country as well.
“It’ll be smaller venues because it’s just me with a piano, and I think that the songs come across best that way,” Tench says. “For me, I don’t really ‘get’ it until I see somebody do it live, so I want to drag it around, and if anybody shows up out of curiosity or because they like what I do, or because they like the Heartbreakers, it’ll give them a chance to see what they think up close.”
Tench has “a few sketches” of other songs he’s been working on but isn’t yet focusing on a next album. It’s quite likely his playing will show up on another Petty and Heartbreakers archival set, however, and Tench — who was part of Mudcrutch first, which then morphed into the Heartbreakers during 1976 — says he’s been pleased with how that musical legacy has been handled, primarily by Petty’s daughter Adria along with Ryan Ulyate and guitarist Mike Campbell.
“I’m very happy because I don’t think (Petty) would release so much of this,” says Tench, who’s read parts of Campbell’s book Heartbreaker: A Memoir, that’s coming out March 18 and is waiting for the audio version. “They still keep me in the loop but it’s mainly Adria and Ryan who are going through everything, and I love what they’re finding. Songs that I don’t remember but, ‘Oh, yeah, I loved that song. How come we left that off?’ It isn’t inferior stuff; it’s stuff that I think, if you like the band and wish you could’ve heard more, there’s more, and it’s good. And if you haven’t heard much of the band, it’s a good way to check it out. I think they’re doing a great job.”
Tench’s upcoming concert itinerary includes:
March 12—Los Angeles, CA—Largo
March 19—Los Angeles, CA—Largo
April 2—Ojai, CA—Ojai Playhouse
April 4—Santa Cruz, CA—Kuumbwa
April 5—San Francisco, CA—The Independent
April 8—Seattle, WA—Triple Door
April 9—Portland, OR—Old Church
April 11—Grass Valley, CA—Center for the Arts
April 12—Sonoma, CA—Sebastiani Theatre
For my own music, I really like to have endless possibilities,” Spiritbox leader Courtney LaPlante says. The singer believes the metal world is too preoccupied with subgenres — helpful for listeners looking for distinct flavors of heavy music but constricting for acts that want to scribble outside their assigned hard rock lines.
LaPlante says other genres aren’t quite as strict: “Look at the first few records that Doechii made and then look at the next three — there are a lot of polar opposites,” she says. “I feel like there’s a drive for artists for each album or body of work to be its own thing.”
Although Spiritbox trades in modern metalcore, the Canadian quartet has become one of the biggest new hard rock acts of the decade by reaching beyond its sonic boundaries: On its 2021 debut, Eternal Blue, which has earned 230,000 equivalent album units, according to Luminate, the band supplemented bone-crunching riffs with hints of synth-pop, prog rock and R&B. The 36-year-old LaPlante, who’s adept at guttural screaming as well as soulful crooning, drives that diverse palette.
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“She’s an encyclopedia of music in general,” says Mike Stringer, Spiritbox’s guitarist and LaPlante’s husband, a few minutes before LaPlante gushes about the latest FKA twigs album and Kate Bush’s back catalog. “We’ve always had this open-door policy of, ‘If we enjoy it and it’s catchy, we’ll probably release it.’ ”
Tsunami Sea, the band’s long-awaited second album, does indeed feature some of its biggest hooks to date as well as some of the group’s most thrash-ready moments, often in the same song. Released March 7 on Pale Chord/Rise Records, the album arrives on a wave of hype, with two consecutive Grammy Award nods for best metal performance and all three of the album’s prerelease tracks — the blistering “Soft Spine,” melodic “Perfect Soul” and electro-tinged “No Loss, No Love” — cracking the top 20 of Hot Hard Rock Songs.
The act opened for bands like Korn, Shinedown and Papa Roach over the past two years but was also tapped by Megan Thee Stallion to remix her song “Cobra” in 2023. Most importantly, manager Jason Mageau says, “They’ve spent the past few years figuring out who they are.”
Courtney LaPlante of Spiritbox performs at Alexandra Palace on Feb. 13, 2025 in London.
Alex Bemis
Rising from the ashes of metal group Iwrestledabearonce in 2017, Spiritbox — whose lineup also includes bassist Josh Gilbert and drummer Zev Rosenberg — spent its first four years weathering personnel changes and gathering early singles for EP releases. While the 2020 singles “Blessed Be” and “Holy Roller” went viral online, the pandemic upended the rollout for Eternal Blue, including touring. “At that moment in time, they had played under 10 shows together,” Mageau says. “So we really took our time building that live show, taking some support opportunities and learning from them.”
Spiritbox released two more EPs, 2022’s Rotoscope and 2023’s The Fear of Fear, to tide over fans who were eager for new material as the band played hard rock tours and festivals. Tsunami Sea took roughly two years to write and complete during gaps in that touring schedule, with 30 song ideas whittled down to the most cohesive 11-track project the group could make.
“It was a very intense process near the end, but I think I had a lot more fun writing for this record than I did Eternal Blue,” Stringer says, “and I feel like it has more of an identity to it.” Because the album follows a more extensive touring history, Spiritbox finished the new songs with a better understanding of how they might translate onstage and more consideration of LaPlante’s live vocals. “We know ourselves musically, as we’re getting older and discovering more about what we can actually achieve,” she says. “For the first time now, when we write stuff, I feel confident. It [only] took 20 years.”
LaPlante
Alex Bemis
After performing some prerelease shows in Europe, Spiritbox will begin a spring global headlining tour on April 3 in Dallas and then join Linkin Park for select stadium shows in the summer. When asked about commercial goals for Tsunami Sea — considering that Eternal Blue peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard 200, its follow-up could become the band’s first 10 entry — Mageau shrugs off anything empirical.
“I really want them to just be themselves. They’ve been a support band for two years — let’s show them what we’re made of,” he says. “It’s been all about finding new areas to insert our band into mainstream conversations and try to bring more women into the space, too. When this band first started, the female listenership on Spotify would be, like, 10%. Now we’re in the 30% range of women listening to the band, and [LaPlante] wants that to increase even more.”
For her part, LaPlante says that being among the fast-rising women in metal is a galvanizing force for a band trying to turn its expanding audiences into safe spaces. “I love the fact that I see all different ages and genders at our shows and kids presenting in any way they want,” she says. “They’re not there because I’m a woman and they’re not there despite me being a woman. They all just heard our siren call and we found each other.”
This story appears in the March 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.
System of a Down drummer John Dolmayan has shared more insights into his fondness for U.S. President Donald Trump, despite the notably progressive views espoused by his band.
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Dolmayan, who joined System of a Down in 1997, shared his recent opinions in a recent discussion with Australian YouTuber Lilian Tahmasian. Throughout the lengthy conversation, the drummer turned his attention to the ever-present topic of politics, addressing his support for the President and confirming that he voted for Trump during his 2024 campaign.
“I’m glad he won, because it brings a little sanity back,” Dolmayan explained. “Irrespective of what you hear out there, it’s much more sane with him than it was without him.”
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As he continued, Dolmayan – who moved from Beirut to California as a two-year-old amidst the Lebanese Civil War – agreed with Trump’s border policy, explaining that while the U.S. thrives on immigration, he believes it must be done “a certain way.”
“We need law and order,” he continued. “Just like you lock your door at night, you don’t want somebody coming to your house when you have secure borders. We need people coming to this country. We all came to this country. And we need more people coming in. And the United States should always be a bastion for people that need it. Maybe they get oppression one way or the other in their countries and they need to leave. Or maybe they just want a fresh start. Or maybe they wanna be part of something that’s unique and interesting like the United States. And they should be allowed to do that, but do it a certain way — pay taxes, whatever you need to do, and live your life.”
Dolmayan’s outspoken support for Trump has been notable in recent years. In 2023, he took to social media to reveal he had lost friends and “hundreds of thousands” of followers due to his support for the President and his “unwillingness to accept the narratives [his followers] are now questioning the validity of.” Speaking to Tahmasian, however, Dolmayan explained that the left or right side of politics “makes no difference” to him, instead claiming he’s against “who’s doing wrong at this time.”
“If the conservatives go way off on the right and become too religious or whatever the case may be, where they’re infringing on people, then I’m gonna be with the Democrats at that point, because I’m not a politician and I don’t give a shit about the political parties. I’m a realist,” he explained. “And whatever’s good for people, that’s what I’m gonna fight for. So I’ll always be the enemy. I can never win.”
System of a Down released five albums between 1998 and 2005, with 2001’s Toxicity, and Hypnotize and Mezmerize (both 2005) all hitting No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The group embarked on a four-year hiatus in 2006, later reforming in 2010 and continuing to perform live sporadically since.
In 2020, System of a Down released the singles “Protect the Land” and “Genocidal Humanoidz,” though the band have shown no indication of recording a further studio album, with Dolmayan claiming that he’s felt “frustration” with the group’s lack of musical progress.
A Day to Remember’s Big Ole Album, Vol. 1 jumps 27-5 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart (dated March 8) — and is the only title on the list charting solely from physical album sales. The set was surprise released on Feb. 18 exclusively on CD and vinyl, with its digital download and streaming versions slated for a March 21 release. (The March 8 chart reflects the sales week ending Feb. 27.)
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In the tracking week ending Feb. 20, the album sold about 4,000 copies in the U.S., according to Luminate and yielded debuts on Top Album Sales (No. 27) and Indie Store Album Sales (No. 4). All sales generated in the Feb. 18-20 frame were from brick-and-mortar stores.
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Then, in the week ending Feb. 27, as mail order sales kicked in, it sold nearly 10,000 copies (up 205%), largely from vinyl sales (almost 8,000). The set surges 27-5 on Top Album Sales, 4-2 on Indie Store Album Sales and bows at No. 4 on Vinyl Albums, No. 6 on Top Hard Rock Albums, No. 19 on Top Alternative Albums, No. 24 on Top Rock Albums and No. 30 on Top Rock & Alternative Albums. It also debuts at No. 155 on the all-genre Billboard 200 as the only title on the list charting from solely physical sales.
With the 27-5 jump on Top Album Sales for A Big Ole Album, Vol. 1, A Day to Remember earns its third top 10-charting effort on the list. The rock band also visited the top 10 with 2021’s You’re Welcome (peaking at No. 3) and 2016’s Bad Vibrations (No. 1).
Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album (TEA) units and streaming equivalent album (SEA) units.
As for the rest of the top 10 on the latest Top Album Sales chart, Tate McRae’s new So Close To What leads the pack, as it debuts atop the list with 71,000 copies sold. Kendrick Lamar’s chart-topping GNX is a non-mover at No. 2 with 19,000 (down 37%) and Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet falls 1-3 with 17,000 (down 77%). Chappell Roan’s former No. 1 The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess climbs 5-4 with nearly 10,000 (down 15%).
The Weeknd’s chart-topping Hurry Up Tomorrow is stationary at No. 6 with 9,000 sold (down 16%) and Stray Kids’ former No. 1 HOP is steady at No. 7 with 8,000 (down 8%).
Rock act Killswitch Engage debuts at No. 8 with This Consequence, selling nearly 7,000 copies. It’s the eight top 10-charting set for the group.
Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft falls one spot to No. 9 with 6,000 sold (down 23%) and G-DRAGON logs his first top 10 with Übermensch bowing at No. 10 with nearly 6,000 sold.
There are a few things you can count on from former and once-again Oasis singer Liam Gallagher: a sneering deliver and jokes. So many jokes. Just 120 days until the July 4 kick-off of one of the most anticipated rock reunions in ages, Gallagher hopped on X on Wednesday (March 5) to finally reveal who […]
Billie Joe Armstrong is Bay Area to the death. The Green Day frontman has long flown the flag of his hometown of Oakland, CA, and nothing has fired him up more than the heartbreaking loss over the past few years of the proud city’s professional sports franchises, the Oakland A’s and NFL’s Raiders.
Now he’s doing something about it.
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The Hollywood Reporter revealed on Wednesday (March 5) that Armstrong has joined fellow Oaktown legend rapper Too $hort as part of the ownership group of the Oakland Ballers, the new independent Pioneer League team that as of this year will be the Bay’s only professional baseball team; the A’s are playing in Sacramento for the next two years ahead of a planned move to Las Vegas in 2028 and the Raiders left in 2020 for Las Vegas.
“This is all about bringing families to a ball game,” Armstrong told THR. “After the A’s left, the town was heartbroken. The Ballers are going to bring good vibes back to Oakland and the broader East Bay.” The privately owned team played their first season in 2024 in the new 4,000-capacity Raimondi Park, which drew baseball lovers for its first season with a unique offer that allowed more than 2,200 fans to buy a share in the team and take seats on its board; the minimum buy-in is $510, a nod to the Bay Area’s area code.
$hort Dogg told THR that he thinks the Ballers are a shining example of what his city’s value proposition. “Oakland is the connection, it’s the diverse city of all walks of life and cultures. We respect each other’s originality, you can be you and with your people,” he said. “It’s ‘I f–k with you regardless.”
And, not for nothing, the “Blow the Whistle” MC — who said he worked as a vendor at the old Oakland Coliseum in high school — loves the name, too. “If I can’t brag on a big-league franchise I can brag on being a Baller,” he said of the team whose name is a pointed rejoinder to former MLB team the A’s. The two musicians bought in as part of the second round of community investment that opened this week, aimed at raising $2 million.
While the amount of Armstrong and Too $hort’s investment has not been revealed, one of the Ballers’ co-founders, Bryan Carmel, said their stake is not just another example of a celebrity swooping in to try and goose a team’s prospects, a la Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds’ purchase of revival of Welsh soccer team Wrexham, chronicled on the FX series Welcome to Wrexham.
Carmel said Armstrong’s relationship with the Ballers began when the rocker and his wife showed up at a game last year. “I looked over and there they were, sitting in front of my parents,” Carmel said. “And then I looked again and they were at the merch stand and Billie Joe was buying a T-shirt. It was crazy because we were playing Green Day songs earlier — not because he was there but just because we’re an Oakland club so we play Green Day songs.”
Armstrong spray-painted the Oakland B’s name over the Oakland A’s logo at the Rogers Center in Toronto last year.
“Sports in the Bay Area have been transforming over the last couple of years. We’ve had some emotional goodbyes to teams we grew up with, but recently there has been a major shift,” Armstrong told The Athletic. “The Oakland Ballers and the Oakland Roots and Soul represent everything I love and grew up on in the Bay Area. The welcoming atmosphere, DIY attitude and the people behind it make me proud to be an investor and support the next generation of teams kids in the Bay will be proud of.”
The Ballers hosted an open try-out last year that led to the signing of history-making right-handed pitcher Kelsie Whitmore, their first female player and, in 2022, the first woman to sign a professional contract with a Major League Baseball Partner League team. The team will kick off their second season on Mary 20.
Courtney Love delivered a surprise cover of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” during an event in London earlier this week, adding to her growing repertoire of unexpected live covers.
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The Hole frontwoman performed the iconic 1965 track at the Royal Geographical Society on Tuesday (March 4) while appearing in conversation with actor-writer Todd Almond. The event celebrated Almond’s new oral history collection Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan’s ‘Girl From the North Country’ and Broadway’s Rebirth.
Following their discussion, Love stepped onto the stage alongside an acoustic guitarist, delivering a raw and impassioned rendition of the classic song, with Almond providing backing vocals.
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The performance took place nearly 60 years after Dylan famously played “Like a Rolling Stone” at the Royal Albert Hall, just next door to the event venue.
During the evening, Love also addressed longstanding speculation about a Hole reunion—shutting down rumors once again. Despite previously hinting in early 2024 that the band might reunite, she reiterated that there are no current plans to bring the group back together.
Love’s choice of cover continues a recent trend of unexpected performances. In February, she appeared onstage alongside Green Day frontman, Billie Joe Armstrong, who was performing at the U.K. venue The Garage with his side-project covers band, The Coverups.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Courtney Love,” Armstrong said halfway through the show according to fan video of the moment the singer unexpectedly took the stage. “Thank you, Billie Joe. My name is Courtney Love – you may not remember me. I’ve been living in a cave in Birmingham for about nine years. We’ll give this a f–king try, right?”
Love then crashed through revved-up takes on Cheap Trick’s 1977 power pop classic “He’s a Whore” and the 1979 Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers tune “Even the Losers” and, according to NME, came back for an encore of Cheap Trick’s iconic “Surrender.”
In 2021, she also surprised fans with a rendition of Britney Spears’ “Lucky,” and in 2017, she took on Selena Gomez’s “Hands to Myself.”
Love’s surprise cover comes as Dylan remains a focal point of discussion in music and film circles. The legendary singer-songwriter was recently reported to have declined an invitation to perform and present at the 2025 Oscars. His biopic A Complete Unknown received eight nominations but did not secure any wins.
Australian musician Nick Cave has always been full of surprises, from his incendiary live performances as the singer of The Birthday Party in the early ‘80s, to collaborating with Kylie Minogue as leader of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. However, few may have seen Staffordshire-style ceramic sculptures as the post-punk icon’s latest passion.
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While it’s not the first topic to come to mind when Cave’s name is mentioned, the 67-year-old has been hard at work as a ceramic sculptor for a number of years now, having first adopted the craft during the global pandemic. Later in 2022, he held his first exhibition, with a series of 17 figures depicting the life story of the devil going on display at Finland’s Sara Hildén Art Museum.
In a recent interview with The Art Newspaper, Cave discussed his fondness for the figures, and his ‘The Devil — A Life’ series, which is currently on display at Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, Netherlands.
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“I’ve collected Staffordshire-style sculptures for years. I just love these things,” he explained. “They’re not expensive works of art; you find them in second-hand shops. I just had them in front of me as I was just sitting at my desk. We sort of grew idle through Covid [and] were allowed to do things that we normally wouldn’t have done. I sat there looking at one of these Staffordshires just thinking, ‘I can do this.’”
According to Cave, his mother had loved the clay figurines he made as a teenager, and her passing at 92 during Covid left him with a “sentimental tug” that soon evolved into his newfound passion. “Mostly it was just that I thought, ‘F–k, you know, it can’t be that hard to make one of these things,’” he explained.
Admitting there is “no irony” to his love of the art form, Cave added that his 17-piece ‘The Devil — A Life’ series also served as a way for him to come to terms with some of the internal feelings that still resonated following the accidental death of his 15-year-old son Arthur in 2015.
“The whole thing started to have a more mysterious, mystical pull,” he explained. “Then they started to be in order, one after the other. They were trying to make sense of my predicament in a way that I couldn’t make sense of it in my songs, for some reason.
“Ultimately, this ended up being something about culpability and forgiveness around the death of my son,” he added. “That was something that I could never quite get to in my songwriting. To me, these became acutely personal.”
Cave’s most recent body of work, Wild God, arrived in August as his 18th studio album with the Bad Seeds. The record reached No. 2 on the charts in his native Australia, while peaking at No. 66 on the Billboard 200. The album received two Grammy nominations and was also nominated for the Australian Music Prize, ultimately losing out to Kankawa Nagarra’s Wirlmarni.