album // Grinderman 2 RMX
Somehow, the news that Nick Cave
had disbanded his Grinderman project last year
totally passed me by. The rough garage spin-off from The
Bad Seeds saw Cave, Martyn P. Casey, Jim
Sclavunos and Warren Ellis deliver a white-hot
second and sadly final album in 2010, eclipsing the work they had
produced on their first Grinderman album in 2007 with a stronger
set of even angrier, more uncompromising and downright sleazier
songs.
One surprising aspect of the Grinderman project,
and something that was only tentatively explored with the first
album, was inviting artists to remix songs. This came to full fruition
on Grinderman 2, with various mixes and new interpretations
being clustered around the limited iTunes album release and the
five singles released to support the project. Nick Cave is not someone
you immediately associate with the art of remixing, the closest
he'd come previously being his re-version of Pulp's 'Disco 2000'
on the Sheffield band's 'Bad Cover Version' single; that 're-interpretation'
approach explains a number of the versions that are compiled on
this remix album, wherein someone else effectively records a version
of the Grinderman song in question as opposed to remixing the original.
There are some genuine remixes here, but a good number are basically
cover versions, while a few are somewhere in between.
If you bought all the releases supporting Grinderman
2, including the rare Record Store Day 12", you'll have
all but two tracks included on Grinderman 2 RMX. It is
a nice concept, the remix album companion to the main release, reminding
you of the halcyon days of dub albums that accompanied reggae LPs,
many of which were better than the actual LPs they were versioned
from, particularly if King Tubby was at the controls. The project's
roll call of collaborators – Queen Of The Stone Age's Joshua
Homme, The National's Matt Berninger, King Crimson axeman Robert
Fripp, Yeah Yeah Yeah's Nick Zinner, The Horrors spin-off Cat's
Eyes, Factory Floor, A Place To Bury Strangers,
Andy Weatherall, former Bad Seed Barry Adamson
– is breathtaking, even if the results sometimes don't quite
match the personnel. The most disappointing mix here is Factory
Floor's mix of 'Evil' which drifts along on dark clouds of ambient
noxiousness but never really goes anywhere in particular.
Elsewhere, you get Robert Fripp spilling hot prog
wax all over a wandering extended version of Grinderman 2's
lead single 'Heathen Child'; U.N.K.L.E. offering up a funky and
danceable take on 'Worm Tamer' (imagine Mark Ronson producing The
Cramps); Josh Homme taking 'Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man' and
adding a frankly ridiculously in-your-face crisp new beat; Cat's
Eyes and Luke Tristram turning 'When My Baby Comes' into a droning,
Goth-friendly theme tune to a vampire flick; Adamson making 'Palaces
Of Montezuma' into an even more glorious love song than the Grinderman
original; Weatherall turning 'Heathen Child' into a bastard son
of bass-heavy dub left over from his Balearic / Screamadelica
days.
The Silver Alert version of 'Evil', where Jim Sclavunos
and Peter Mavrogeorgis are joined by Matt Berninger, who delivers
Cave's vocal with trademark strained, detached euphoria. The sonic
backdrop is engaging, dark and cloying but the reliance on time-stretching
segments of Cave's original vocal is a little much. Nick Zinner's
rough rework of 'Bellringer Blues' (one of the two new tracks here)
takes the original, adds some threatening bass noises, crunches
up the beat and elevates the chiming percussion to the point where
you can't tell if your tinnitus is worse than you first thought.
The other new reinterpretation comes in the form of the SixToes
version of 'When My Baby Comes' which is turned into a beautiful
intersection between chamber orchestration and jazzy reference points.
The final track on this collection is a raw early
version of 'Evil' achieved by Warren Ellis and Nick Cave, originally
released on the rare-as-hen's-teeth Record Store Day 2011 12";
its angry noise bursts serves as the most fitting epitaph to the
Grinderman project.
2xlp/cd/i:
1. Super Heathen Child
2. Worm Tamer (A Place To Bury Strangers Remix)
3. Bellringer Blues (Nick Zinner Remix)
4. Hyper Worm Tamer (U.N.K.L.E. Remix)
5. Mickey Bloody Mouse (Remixed by Joshua Homme)
6. When My Baby Comes (Cat's Eyes with Luke Tristram)
7. Palaces Of Montezuma (Barry Adamson Remix)
8. Evil (Silver Alert Remix featuring Matt Berninger)
9. When My Baby Comes (SixToes Remix)
10. Heathen Child (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
11. Evil (The Michael Cliffe House Remix)
12. First Evil
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