The ‘goth Nancy and Lee’ bring Strange Weather

Nicole Atkins and Jim Sclavunos bring the fruits of their duet project to town

This is an album which has been a long time coming. Singer-songwriter Nicole Atkins and multi-instrumentalist/producer Jim Sclavunos started working on an album of duets back in 2015.

Nicole has carved herself a career as an acclaimed performer with half a dozen solo albums under her belt, while Jim’s career goes back to the late-70s No Wave scene in

New York, and is perhaps best known now as long-term drummer with Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds and Grinderman.

The pair first met more than a decade ago when Nicole’s then manager suggested they try writing together for her next album.

‘This was 2011/12, and I was very intimidated by him at first,’ recalls Nicole, ‘probably just because of his size and sharp dressing. But then we got together and ended up writing three songs in a day – it's crazy.

‘We write really fast together, so we started getting together all the time. I was going through a breakup too, and he kind of helped me out with that. He just gives me really good life advice, particularly on the music business. I was 34 years old and I told him I felt too old (for the music business), but he told me: “You're never too old – you need to think of your work as your life's work, it's a body of work”. In the music industry, no one tells you that, everybody tells you: “Oh you're 27? You're an old bag!”

‘With any craft – it's something you get better at over time, stick with it. I don't think there's enough people telling younger artists that, or even middleaged artists that.

‘It's crazy to say because I wouldn't say it to his face – I should – but meeting Jim was really one of the most important meetings of my life.’

The resulting album, 2014’s Slow Phaser featured a couple of their co-writes and he has been a presence on both her successive studio albums.

After Slow Phaser’s release, Nicole recalls she was at dinner with Jim’s wife.

‘We had so many surplus songs we'd written together and there's only a certain number of songs that thematically fit on the album, and I was saying to Sarah, I really want to find another person to sing with, duetstyle. I didn't want these songs to go to waste. She said: “Have you asked Jim?” I didn't know he sang!

‘So I asked him and he said he would love it.’

They convened at a studio in Asbury Park, in Nicole’s home state of New Jersey, and gathered a team of musicians around them, including Mickey, aka Dean Ween of cult-rockers Ween, who gave his fee as ‘a pizza, a case of beer, and a chicken masala.’

There were further sessions years later in Electric Lady Studios in New York, which included guitar from Jon Spencer of The Blues Explosion, who Nicole happened to bump into on the street and invite along.

With Nicole now based in Nashville and Jim in London, progress has been slow, but as Nicole adds: ‘It's been a really luxurious way to work because we've got to really perfect it.’

Nicole describes the results as ‘a goth Nancy and Lee,’ while Jim opts for ‘psychedelic folk tunes written by lonely Martians.’

Hear for yourself at The Edge of The Wedge on Monday, June 5. Tickets £16. Go to wedgewood-rooms.co.uk.