Q1 With your projects do you start with a particular concept or are you working towards something in your mind?

No, I just wait and then when I get the call I go and do it, which is just occasionally.

Q2 So when you start work do you make a decision about what you're going to write?

No. It's a bit more like you've got no choice. Sometimes I write things that I find really embarrassing and then I feel like I've still got no choice and have to go through with it.

Q3 Is songwriting something you do and then just leave behind?

It's something that you do without the idea that it means more of you. It's not an invitation for people to ask for more of you. It's really enough. Like also an opinion and then how do you feel about it and then how do you feel about how you feel about it and...

Q4 "Sex O'Clock" contains songs which are quite despairing and others with a strong sense of redemption - the lyrics are surprisingly open. Could you tell us about that?

Yeah, but it's like being asked to explain your own punchline to a joke. You can say something really quite terrible about yourself very safely, because the person who is listening to you isn't prepared to say that about themselves and it affords you a type of protection, but there is a solace in somebody doing it and especially in the form of CD. That's just my little trick, but the music's really good, so no-one bothers to kind of get exposed to what I'm doing, because of the music, which is this huge other thing, which is everything. Otherwise it's just a conversation in a kitchen, which are some of the greatest moments of genius that I've ever experienced from other people.

Q5 Do you have any idea of what your work means to your audience?

For my audience, no. It's more like (coughs) I get a feeling that it might mean something, but it's only a feeling, it's not intellectual and then on an intellectual level, it would be - if I was really fanciful - it would be because it's in the arena. It's in the frame of the exhaulted person doing it, because it's a record or on radio or an image. It's like an angel coming down to say I understand you or you too! You too can have your picture taken. There's no difference.

Q6 Do you have a method of writing or do you start things from a feeling or an idea?

No, I start most things by a bit of enthusiasm and kind of making someone else a bit interested and then I collapse and then they're stuck with the project and they go on, all frustrated and then I might rise to the occasion occasionally. And then it comes back again, usually. It comes back to pick me up and carry me along for a minute.

Q7 Do you think it's enough to just release a CD or does it help to explain it through interviews?

I feel like everything after, things like the typeface on the cover or the interview or the this or that, is setting out to dispel whatever the moment of truth was or the image was. It's like setting out to confuse it and just because this process is in place, you do interviews, you have photos, you have other stuff. It's sort of about it, but it isn't. You just kind of make it up after.

Q8 So how do you feel about album covers?

I don't like record covers anymore. I used to like them when they were record covers, but these days, it's like they say what language this faceless person can understand, selling something.

Q9 Well, do you think artists have to put themselves on show alongside their work?

You don't. We just have the misfortune of really knowing the biographies of some musicians and pop artists. Some are really telling and moving, like Billie Holliday, Charlie Parker and stuff, and then these days, it's nothing to do with how great their work is, but to do with their life meshing with what they do, ??? be shameful or humiliating or sometimes very reasonable or sometimes enhances their work or sometimes just degrades it. Their biography. And it really shouldn't be involved, because it's already there.

Q10 So are you more interested in the work of art or the artist?

It's absolutely a separate phenomenon. There is a piece of music and that is a world unto itself and then it gets attached to a person with a biography and that's another world unto itself. It becomes really intriguing and interesting, but they don't have to exist together.

Q11 Do you think someone like Mick Harvey, your collaborator and producer doesn't have to deal with those public profile issues?

Well, he doesn't have to think about the somebody he might be in terms of people looking. He's who he wants to be for himself and he has the great pleasure of being really creative, which he is, and the unique ??thing?? of finishing projects. Ask me some banal questions!!

Q12 Do you intend to work with Nick Cave again?

Work with him? (laughs)

Q13 What kind of music do you listen to at home?

I don't listen to the radio or have a music collection or a record collection.

Q14 Who are your favourite singers?

Annie Lennox, PJ Harvey, Madonna - other people that I don't know the name of, but I know their songs.

Q15 Do you empathise with Annie, PJ and Madonna as female singers?

Well, about female pop stars and stuff, I think I actually just like all of them. I can't think of anyone I don't like....even Celine Dion, which is kind of trad to not like her by now.

Q16 Where did the title "Sex O'Clock" come from?

It just came - title (laughs). Very childish. They don't seemed to have noticed that. They think it's full with meaning.

Q17 I've heard you don't intend to perform the new album live. Why is that?

Because I'm just not really interested in the experience of performing live and I guess I'm just not that kind of generous to want to tap dance and entertain and sing my little heart out for the troops.

Q18 The video for "The Next Man That I See" doesn't feature you very heavily. Why all the house images? What's going on there?

It's Jung isn't it, the house? Being the body and what it looks like. It's just thinking that goes on. Thinking goes on inside of houses, which leads of course to perception and what you do with your energy and the video is double iconoclastic and double disillusioning, because it iss portraying suburbia, like when you really look, everything becomes something. We are so used to extremes in visually imagery or emotional provocations.

Q19 Are you happy with a career as a singer/songwriter?

Well, I don't mind being a singer songwriter