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album // Grinderman 2
The point with Grinderman
– the four-piece band of Nick Cave, Martyn
P Casey, Jim Sclavunos and Warren
Ellis – is that it's supposed to be raw, relatively
unadulterated rock. Journalists described the first album as having
a 'garage' sound; I always thought the term was a little too convenient,
reflecting more the line-up of the slimmed-down quartet compared
to The Bad Seeds' greater scale, but I do think
there is some resonance with the punk-anticipating lo-fi bands of
the Sixties. Some journalists compared Grinderman to The
Birthday Party, Cave's first band, once again conveniently,
simply because it showcased Cave's more wild edge. The point is
that Grinderman is all of these things, yet none
of these things. Laid next to Junkyard or Mutiny,
Grinderman is nothing like The Birthday Party. It's frenetic, yes,
but infinitely more mature than those relatively juvenile recordings.
To me it just sounds like Cave and his mates ripping open some tinnies
and jamming freely, let loose from the weight of expectation heaped
upon his critically-acclaimed work with The Bad Seeds.
Grinderman 2 is a comparatively more polished
affair than its 2007 predecessor. Across nine tracks there is a
loud, rough, fuzzy edge but it's nowhere near as frantic. It still
concerns itself with sex, and if not sex, then thinly-veiled Viz-esque
metaphors for sex, which The Wire interpreted as misogynistic.
There's even a bluesy ballad in the shape of 'Palaces Of Montezuma'
which is an out-and-out love song, shimmering with a summery harmonic
beauty. Perhaps The Wire's Nina Power didn't get that far
into the album. 'When My Baby Comes' is similarly concerned with
that lovin' feeling, the chorus benefiting from some rare straight
- ie unprocessed - viola from Warren Ellis. The sharp turn into
bass-heavy scraping and droning just prevents this from
sounding like familiar Bad Seeds balladry.
'Bellringer Blues' has all the louche bluesy, Stones-hugging
abandon of Primal Scream circa 'Give Out But Don't Give Up', seeing
Cave take his place alongside Jagger and Gillespie for some loose-limbed
swaggering. One of the most sonically adventurous songs is the muted
'What I Know', which starts with the sort of popping static that
Neubauten used to conjure out of miscellaneous
air cannisters; a vague pulse and some spooky moaning offsets a
rambling, almost improvisatory vocal from Cave. It's like a campfire
blues as conceived by Carsten Nicolai.
My two favourite tracks are the opener 'Mickey Mouse
And The Goodbye Man' (surely the hawk-eyed Disney megacorp would
insist that there should be an ® symbol in there somewhere?)
and 'Evil'. The former is the most out-and-out rock track of the
lot, a frantic rush up-and-down ride in a high-rise elevator. It's
relentless and maniacal. 'Evil' on the other hand is a veritable
argument on record. While Cave spills out impassioned messages of
adoration to a loved one, the other assembled Grindermen throw out
accusatory shouts of 'evil' like Lewis Farrakhan at his most vituperative.
The music, meanwhile, sounds like some bleak offcut from Eno's Spinner
album with Jah Wobble.
For maximum effect, opt for the iTunes LP, which
adds in 'Super Heathen Child' with Robert Fripp on the six-string,
and the beautiful folksy bonus track 'Fire Boy'. Two remixes from
Factory Floor ('Evil') and Andrew fatherall ('Heathen Child') –
as unlikely as remixing a Nick Cave project might sound –
complete the audio line-up. Factory Floor's mix is skeletal and
propelled ever-onward by a dubby submerged bass frequency. With
Cave's vocal floating disjointedly over the top, it's best described
as being like a Suicide cover version. Weatherall's
'Bass Mix' meanwhile throws in some pitch-shifted whoops and hollering
from Cave and mostly takes us back to his golden era of deep, bass-heavy
Balearic grooves circa Screamadelica. You also get the
ridiculously tongue-in-cheek John Hillcoat video for 'Heathen Child'.
The Road it ain't.
lp+cd/cd/iTunes LP:
1. Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man
2. Worm Tamer
3. Heathen Child
4. When My Baby Comes
5. What I Know
6. Evil
7. Kitchenette
8. Palaces Of Montezuma
9. Bellringer Blues
10. Super Heathen Child (iTunes LP bonus track)
11. Fire Boy (iTunes LP bonus track)
12. Evil (Factory Floor Remix)
13. Heathen Child (Andrew Weatherall Bass Mix)
single // Heathen Child
'Heathen Child' is plain weird, and if you watch
the video you'll wind up gobsmacked at just how mental the whole
affair is. Detailing the somnambulent daydreams of a girl lying
in a bathtub, 'Heathen Child' has a tribal, primitive funk vibe
with a steady, ever-present thud of a beat and some seriously heavy
distortion going on. It sounds like a lot of fun to make, and some
of that spirit is undoutedly captured perfectly by John Hillcoat's
hilarious (if slightly disturbing) video. My eldest daughter loves
this song - I'm not sure four year olds are the target demographic,
but she's evidently got good taste.
'Star Charmer' is delicate folk with some plain
beautiful violin. It is, in many ways, too Bad Seeds to be a Grinderman
track, but it serves as a gentle reminder that Cave remains, in
the tradition of Dylan and Cohen, one of the finest lyricists and
balladeers operating today.
The anger returns with the 12"-only 'Super
Heathen Child', wherein the quartet are joined by esteemed axeman
Robert Fripp. Fripp's inclusion is, on a personal
level, very important to me; along with Neubauten frontman and former
Bad Seed guitarist Blixa Bargeld, Fripp was responsible
for turning me on to the seemingly limitless possibilities of the
guitar after shunning music made with the instrument until my late
teens. The extended version of 'Heathen Child' takes the freakout
further, Fripp's guitar grinding along with prog abandon. Seminal.
A radio edit of 'Heathen Child' was available as
a free download for subscribers to the Grinderman email mailing
list.
12"/i:
A1. Heathen Child
A2. Star Charmer
AA. Super Heathen Child (12" only)
single // Worm Tamer
'Worm Tamer' appears to be a long list of euphemisms,
the likes of which would make Viz or Carry On
films emmensely proud. It doesn't take a genius to work out what
the 'worm' in the title is referring to and the song is full of
such humourous alternative words for Nick Cave's
penis. The smuttiness culminates in the line 'My baby calls
me the Loch Ness Monster / Two big humps and then I'm gone'.
There's a chance I've got the subject matter of this song totally
wrong of course, in which case I'll happily apologise and scrape
myself out of the gutter. 'Worm Tamer' is dirty, dirge-like which
is only rescued from bleakness by some neat counterpoint wordless
harmonies to Cave's snarling vocal.
Once again, the track was bizarrely commissioned
to be remixed, but the results are uniformly brilliant. In the case
of 'Worm Tamer' there are mixes by U.N.K.L.E. (who Cave has also
recorded a collaboration with) and recent Mute
signing A Place To Bury Strangers. U.N.K.L.E.'s
mix ('Hyper Worm Tamer') is a solid, funky affair that will have
even the most stoic muso shaking his tailfeather; imagine Barry
Adamson sparring with The Cramps and you'll get somewhere close.
APTBS turn in their usual frantic Jesus And Mary Chain-on-amphetamines
motorik dsytopian distortion rock, and it sounds every bit as good
as anything else they've ever done.
12"/i:
A1. Worm Tamer
A2. Worm Tamer (A Place To Bury Strangers Remix)
AA. Hyper Worm Tamer (U.N.K.L.E. Remix)
single // Palaces Of Montezuma
'Palaces Of Montezuma' is one of the oddities of
Grinderman 2, in so far as it's a love song, effectively
a list of things that Nick Cave would gift to his
lover. I'm not sure if it's soul music, or a kind of white gospel,
but it's evidently a delicate love poem backed by a rapturous piano
and some sweet vocal harmonies. But, like I said at the beginning,
it stands apart from the other tracks on Grinderman 2,
not because it's necessarily superior, but because it's not built
on freewheeling nihilism. It's like No More Shall We Part-era
Bad Seeds. It's such a beautiful song that even
Mrs S, who despite my badgering remains unconvinced of Cave's genius,
thinks it quite lovely too.
The multi-coloured 12" and download include
two remixes - one by Cenzo and one by Cave's old mucker Barry
Adamson. Cenzo's mix is best described as an alternative
single mix, as it mostly sticks to the form of the original, just
whacks up the guitars in the background; nothing especially wrong
with it, but it just seems subtle to the point of passivity. Adamson's
mix manages to stir up the vocal harmonies in the background into
a dense and impenetrable web of gentle looping noise, while a clipped
version of the piano rhythm and some neat string additions stop
this from falling to the same fate as Cenzo's version by differentiating
itself sufficiently from the original. Something about the arrangement
gives it a Loaded-era Primal Scream joyousness that I hadn't
detected in the album version.
Rounding off the single is a re-version of the Grinderman
2 track 'When My Baby Comes' performed by Cat's Eyes with Luke
Tristram, and even though it's technically a 'cover', it's a brilliant
reinterpretation of the song. Starting with ethereal female vocals
and a gradually ascending drone, the song opens out over the course
of the five minutes into a buzzing Nine Inch Nails-style slice of
slowcore dark rock, or Moby circa the slower pieces
on Animal Rights.
The release of the 12" came with an email that
the track list was printed incorrectly, making this the second physical
release from Grinderman 2 with errors - the original 12" of
'Heathen Child' was recalled because it has an incorrect version
of the track. I can't say I'm a huge fan of the sleeve either...
12"/i:
A1. Palaces Of Montezuma (Cenzo Remix)
A2. Palaces Of Montezuma (Barry Adamson Remix)
B1. Palaces Of Montezuma
B2. When My Baby Comes (Cat's Eyes with Luke Tristram)
single // Evil
Grinderman released 'Evil' as a
single for Record Store Day 2011. The single came as a multi-coloured
12" (12mute666 - of course) with a CD copy of the tracks, and
was limited to 750 copies in the UK. A limited edition T-shirt was
also available around the same time.
'Evil' was one of my favourite songs from Grinderman
2. In my album review I described it as being a bit like an
argument on record, with lots of odd love messages delivered by
a crooning Nick Cave ('Who needs a record player?
You are my record player,' is a naturally favourite line) while
the rest of the band stand judgment, hurling the word 'evil'
at the singer with pointed fingers.
The album version of the track was included on the
Record Store Day release, alongside a mix from Factory Floor, a
rough demo version and a version by Silver Alert (Jim Sclavunos
and Peter Mavrogeorgis) and The National's Matt Berninger. The National
have a song called 'Evil' on 2010's High Violet; it's not
the same song, but Berninger does sing some pretty unpleasant things
therein about eating someone's brains.
The Michael Cliffe House Remix by Factory Floor
feels like something of a wasted opportunity, particularly after
the thudding other remake of the track by the band (see iTunes LP
above). At best this is inoffensive dark ambient noodling with occasional
industrial signals, hinting at something more satisfying than this
beat-free rambling. The demo, just Cave and Warren Ellis,
is altogether more urgent than the ultimately realised version,
here rendered with the shouty 'evil's but no actual lyrics,
just mumbles and guttural rasps from Cave. It's an enlightening
glance upon Grinderman's improvisatory approach to songwriting,
though it's also fair to describe it as a gleeful, noisy mess.
The Silver Alert version is, sonically, pretty engaging.
Given Sclavunos's day job as a percussionist / drummer, it naturally
has an interesting rhythm, lots of shakers and scraped instruments.
A muted bass pulse ripples through the entire track, overlaid by
feedback to recreate the kind of clever, sparse noisescape Einstürzende
Neubauten were fond of circa Ende Neu. A piano
note and a general movement in an uplifting dimension ushers in
Berninger's vocals, giving the version an elegiac quality. I am
quite fond of The National, and the only annoyance to this otherwise
perfect take is the pitch-shifted snatch of Cave singing 'oh
baby, baby, baby' from the original which just doesn't fit.
A big thanks to Chris for letting me listen
to the tracks to write this review.
12"+cd:
A1. Evil
A2. Evil (The Michael Cliffe House Remix)
B1. First Evil
B2. Evil (Silver Alert Remix featuring Matt Berninger)
single // Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man
'Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man' is single number
five to be taken from Grinderman's second album
(if you include the Record Store Day 12"); the opening track
from the album, this attention-grabbing song perfectly introduces
the messy, fried garage-blues-punk that Grinderman 2 took
to a new level. 'Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man' is a howling,
raging beast of a track, full of decadent imagery generally involving
some somewhat unsavoury antics with a lady, frequent elevator rides
and references to roleplaying as Mickey Mouse (I'm just back from
Disneyland Paris, so this is somewhat uncomfortable to imagine as
I watched my daughters shake Mickey's hand and get cuddles from
the cartoon mouse). Sonically it's all snaking bass, frantic drums
and messy guitars, almost like the song itself is struggling to
stay under the musicians' control. It's as perfect as an intentionally
imperfect thing can be.
Included on the gorgeous black and white heavy vinyl
12" and download is a remix of the track by Josh 'Queens Of
The Stone Age' Homme, re-titled 'Mickey Bloody Mouse'. Starting
with Nick Cave's vocals all layered, overlapped
and subjected to gentle echo, while clocks tick away in the background,
the song soon moves into familiar QOTSA territory with Jim
Sclavunos's original drum-beating replaced by a prominent,
almost ridiculously in-your-face and deliciously over-the-top pattern.
It falters a little toward the end, but it's pretty good nonetheless.
The release also includes a faithful live version
of 'Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man' recorded for Ce Soir (Ou Jamais!),
highlighting that this garage rock isn't so much out of control
and improvised as delicately sculpted, since it loses none of its
rocket-propelled urgency in a live setting and that stalking low-end
is rendered even more beautifully sinister than it is on record.
Sound quality-wise it seems a little lacking, like a YouTube clip
converted to audio perhaps, but it's worth having for Cave's lumpen
French accent at the end.
12"/i:
A1. Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man
A2. Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man (Live At Ce Soir (Ou Jamais!))
B. Mickey Bloody Mouse (Remixed by Joshua Homme)
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