Come Be My Grinderman! (Grinderman - Grinderman)

Member Name: DanielKemp

Product:	Grinderman - Grinderman
Date:	16/09/09 (62 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A hard garage-rock leaning, fast and furious pace

Disadvantages: A couple of tracks don't reach fruition

Grinderman (2007)

Producer: Nick Launay, Grinderman

Get It On
No Pussy Blues
Electric Alice
Grinderman
Depth Charge Ethel
Go Tell the Women
(I Don't Need You To) Set Me Free
Honey Bee (Let's Fly To Mars)
Man in the Moon
When My Love Comes Down
Love Bomb

Grinderman was formed by the legendary Nick Cave and this is their self-titled debut album, which was released in 2007. Right, first things first, this is not Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Sure, the band consists of the great man himself, Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos, all of whom are members of the aforementioned band, but Grinderman is a different beast and so much more than a side-project. Whereas their work within the Bad Seeds is constructed with a great deal of careful consideration for the final product, Grinderman is all about living in the here and now, as each track is most simply categorised as thrilling and edgy garage-rock, albeit topped off by Nick Cave's trademark wit and predisposition for gothic subjects.

"I've gotta get up to get down and start all over again," is the opening lyric from Nick on first track, Get It On; the lyric surges majestically over a deformed soundscape of instability, crafted by his amateur guitar playing. Weird that, to hear a squall of noise from the off and not the usual Bad Seeds introduction, which would make its presence felt by working on multiple levels. Here, the music has the sole purpose of bringing you cheap thrills, quickly and surely. Of course, that's not to say it isn't credible, which it most definitely is. Nick could record an entire record of him burping and farting and it'd probably still end up entirely melodic (with a gentle leaning toward new age blues).

Of course, you cannot get through talking about this record without mentioning No Pussy Blues, so I may as well mention it now. Look, it is big, it is stupid and it is silly, but hell, does that grinding bass line rock out or what, man?! "I bought her a dozen snow white doves, I did her dishes in rubber gloves," cries Nick in sexual frustration, "but she just still didn't want to!" Nick rarely writes about a subject so bluntly and with so many simple, yet breath-taking couplets, so we should applaud him for the fact that it works. It could have so easily been a disaster, but it thankfully manages to avoid the obvious trap of being a novelty track.

One of my favourite cuts is Depth Charge Ethel. Think Nick Cave fronting The White Stripes during their Icky Thump record, only with a hotter rhythm section and perverse verses, "I entered the room at the canned laughter, Ethel was angled over some dude's knee!" Also, ladies and gentlemen, what about the coarse instrumentals during the chorus, with particular kudos going to Nick's repertoire of stomping organ riffs.

Out of the quieter moments (of which there are a few), Go Tell the Women is the most successful. Nick opts for a low-key growl, which is ever so slightly intimidating, but casual, smooth and sexy, as ever. Actually, it's one of my all time favourite Nick Cave vocals, as he is given prominence over the actual instruments. That's how I like my Nick - pure, unsullied and defiantly confident.

If anything can be called commercial on this record it is (I Don't Need You To) Set Me Free, with its vocal harmonies and adorning musicianship adding to Nick's as cool as an ice cube vocal performance. For me, the song's peak is when Nick announces, "Come on Grindermen," and like keen leaders of an underground cult, his men follow his sterling efforts and up their musicianship, while driving their backing vocals to the forefront.

Are there moments which disappoint? Well, not really, but I want to have a little dig at When My Love Comes Down. It is one of the only songs on the record to boast a proper introduction, with gradually built layers of musicianship, so I guess my disappointment has to be levelled at the fact that it doesn't quite reach the climax I expect it to. It has a lot going for it, with its restrained energy, which you genuinely believe to be going somewhere, but it never quite snowballs into the lively culmination you may have anticipated up to this point.

But it hardly matters when the album is brought to a finish by the dirty, distorted thunderstorm of feedback and angular riffs of Love Bomb. "I went down to my baby's house and I sat down on the step, said, '2000 years of Christian love baby and you still haven't learned to love me yet,' " screams Nick, adding a pious edge to his accusations. Remember this for when you are middle-aged and balding - kids, you can afford to rock out with the under produced and youthful exuberance of a freshly signed band when you remain as literate as this within your work.

So, my friends, will it be Grinderman or the Bad Seeds? Well, it's a trick question, of course. The former couldn't exist without the latter, and not being dependant on its older brother, Grinderman is allowed to co-exist alongside the Bad Seeds and provide yet another outlet for the genius of (Sir) Nick Cave.

8/10

Daniel Kemp

Read more reviews at www.danielkempreviews.co.uk

Summary: Not just a side-project - Classic Nick Cave!