The New Music

Grinderman Grinderman 2 [Anti-]

Need to know: Grinderman is essentially a more stripped, unhinged version of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Formed by Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos as a way to unlock their more primal rock’n’roll urges and liberate themselves from the Bad Seeds canon. Aside from the looseness and no holds barred attitude of the music, it’s Cave’s decision to pick up the guitar that distinguished Grinderman from the Bad Seeds most. The band released their self-titled debut album in March 2007, but returned to the Bad Seeds the next year to record and release Dig, Lazurus, Dig!!!. Grinderman 2 was recorded in August 2009 with Nick Launay, who also produced the first album.

In a 100 words or so: Like the threatening wolf that graces the cover, Grinderman 2 is one snarling, temperamental beast. Like its predecessor, Cave’s unguarded prose reveals this sexual predator persona, waxing about mid-life neuroses and triple-x urges through biting one-liners. On the slithering, skronking “Worm Tamer,” Nick boasts that “My baby calls me the Loch Ness Monster/Two great big humps and then I’m gone,” while on the sludgy blues of “Kitchenette,” he tries to woo a housewife with the line “What’s this husband of yours ever given to you?/Oprah Winfrey on a plasma screen?” For all of his lyrical double entendres and free-flowing zingers though, Cave’s lyrics are only as dangerous as his band. But he’s got three depraved souls behind him, not to mention himself clawing away at the guitar, to make this some of the dirtiest, unbalanced music since Cave’s first band, the debaucherous Birthday Party. But just when you think you have them pegged, Grinderman throw in the surprisingly spiritual and sophisticated “Palaces of Montezuma,” a song that can save any soul, even these four brutes.

Best track: “Worm Tamer”

R.I.Y.L. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Birthday Party, The Stooges

Rating: 8.5/10

Buy, download, steal or don’t bother: Buy.

Sample: “Heathen Child”

Website: Grinderman.com