Just as you thought you'd worked out Nick Cave's twisted version of songwriterly sophistication, along came 2007 and Grinderman. A strange kind of side-project starring Bad Seeds stalwarts Martyn Casey, Warren Ellis and Jim Sclavunos, Grinderman dumped the usual modus operandi by insisting "No God, no love, no piano", based themselves around Cave's rudimentary guitar skills and deep love of the nasty side of the blues, and made a self-titled debut that made you laugh out loud at its rumbling aggression and hilarious takes on mid-life crisis and being an unapologetic dirty old man.
Received more rapturously than any Cave/Bad Seeds album since Murder Ballads - and buoyed by sweatily vicious shows that personified the band in terms of lounge suits and wild facial hair - Grinderman the album forced Grinderman the band to become Cave's parallel career. Hence a much-anticipated follow-up that responds to demand by sounding altogether more worked upon than the quartet's feral debut.
Not that Grinderman 2 is aimed at the Mumford & Sons market. But veteran producer Nick Launay has helped Cave & Co toward a bigger, fuller sound, influenced as much by 60s garage punk and droning Krautrock as the blues. Ellis unleashes a slew of stunning guitar moves, sometimes erecting a wall of psychedelic sound, sometimes bucking and rearing out of the murk like some wounded animal at the end of its cattle-prod tether.
But thrash is largely eschewed for suspenseful dynamics, dumb jokes (Worm Tamer features the timeless couplet, "My baby calls me the Loch Ness monster / Two great big humps and then I'm gone") and stand-out exercises in mood and texture, especially the Suicide-esque, creep-minimalism of What I Know and the stunning rock mambo of When My Baby Comes.
Elsewhere, stalking, rape and murder is just a swamp-blues kiss away. Those wanting the lovelorn, classicist Cave of The Boatman's Call and The Good Son need not apply. The rest of us will succumb happily to Grinderman's sick skill and wonder why rebel teens don't make dangerous, dastardly rock'n'roll like this anymore.
This is a GREAT album, if you don't enjoy it after you've heard it 3 times you should go fuck a dog and die of trans mutated dog AIDS.
i like this wolfshit.
I don't like this wolfshit.
first 2 songs are amazing but the rest is just a pile of crap
Grinderman 2 is simply one of the best albums I've heard.
tagged as "pure grit and fuzz" lol
Fuck 'Em All; Album Of The Year.
simply Great.
can't wait until thursday
It's just too Nick Cave by numbers
thanks, Nick. lOve.
2=poo
Record of the year.
Megaton Atom Bomb
awrrrfuuugh!
Liking this.
one of the best albums of the year
so good
pure awesomeness
i like it jejejejejejejejeejejejejejejejejejejejejejejjeejje
Not sure about Nick Cave's lyrics these days but hell I don't care it sounds like a superb album to me.
Oh my fuckin God! Best of the year along with Massive Attack - Heligoland
\m/
It's so fucking pizdatyi))))
Following three spins of Grinderman 2, definitive conclusions elude me. As anticipated, it’s not the debut’s equal, but by Zeus it has its moments. Cave croons excessively of “my baby” in recent releases, and the bluesy, Southern gothic is growing thinner than his fringe – but there are lines on this record (“My baby calls me the Loch Ness monster: two big humps and then I’m gone” etc), atop raucously reverberating guitars, that could not have been conceived by anyone else. Anyone. The opening four tracks appear the highpoints; “When my baby comes” (its title accepted) and “Worm Tamer” showcase Nick Cave and Co. at their bestial best. Initially, “Heathen Child’s” menstrual milieu and female predator seemed Cave by numbers, but it grows into a more complex equation. The sound recalling everything from The Birthday Party to Silver Apples Against such an unparalleled back-catalogue, Grinderman 2 was always going to a wolf in fox’s clothing. More spins, please.
this album is ridiculously amazing. i think i'm on my fifth listen of the day.
\å/
\m/
\m/
\m/
\m/