Musings

Back in 2007, Nick Cave acknowledged an all out mid-life crisis, a savage side project featuring several Bad Seeds stalwarts, and Grinderman was born. And it was about as discreet as the title of first single ‘No Pussy Blues’ suggests.

So favourably received was the debut album that it forced Grinderman to become less of a side project and more of a parallel career; a jaunt through the wilder side of the blues and an exercise for the dirty old man in Cave.

What sounds like a half improvised jamming session of noise, distortion, blues and verging on psychedelic walls of sound coupled with Cave’s musings on God, love, life and death is Grinderman II.

The album chugs and thrashes; the ferocious, innuendo showered ‘Worm Tamer’ is equal parts hilarity and self deprecation – “My baby calls me the Loch Ness monster / two great big humps and then I’m gone”.

Cave speaks as though he is a man who has been there and done that – which he has – and his lyrics carry great depth; his regretful crooning though one of the albums quieter moments, ‘What I Know’ is as heavy hitting as any of the blues rock stompers and howling lust found on the record.

 ‘Kitchenette’ manages to make every sentence sound as lurid as possible; “I stick my fingers in your biscuit jar” has never sounded this x-rated.

Many artists approaching their fifties would have been happy to settle for what they have done and leave it at that, but Cave’s Grinderman gamble, of embracing the age he is at, unleashing the lounge suit and lizard tongue,  has paid off and has made the project his most anticipated and appreciated in years.

Highlight ‘Palaces of Montezuma’, a long list of romantic promises the lovelorn Cave offers to his reluctant suitor in increasing desperation, effectively closes the album, before the psychedelic miasma of ‘Bellringer Blues’ closes the door.

Grinderman II continues the growth of a former side project into a fully grown powerhouse in its own right.

8.5/10