Grinderman: Grinderman

Grinderman
Grinderman
Anti-

When it comes to being Prince of Darkness, even Ozzy can't hold a candle to Nick Cave. With his Lon Chaney looks and Leonard Cohen baritone, the Australian-born Cave has spent 30 years exploring every square inch of the shadows--from the brutal (Tender Prey) to the beautiful (The Boatman's Call). His new side project, Grinderman, isn't really a side project at all (all four members are carry-overs from Cave's longtime band, the Bad Seeds), but it is a return to the sort of whiskey saloon, goth-punk aggression that made legends of Cave's original outfit, The Birthday Party.

Any efforts to describe the sneering, freeform bluntness of lead single "No Pussy Blues" would fall woefully short of matching Cave's own assessment of the track in a recent Grinderman press release. "It is the child standing goggle-eyed at the cake shop window," he explained, "as the shop-owner, in his plastic sleeves, barricades the door and turns the sign to CLOSED. It is the howl in the dark of the Everyman."

Or it's a song about blue balls, but you get the idea. Cave is at his best when he's frustrated--whether it's over women ("I Don't Need You To Set Me Free"), the music biz ("Get It On"), or women again ("Go Tell the Women"). We done our thing, we have evolved, he claims on the latter track. We're up on our hind legs, the problem's solved. If Cave's problem was finding the right balance between his young punk and old poet personas, Grinderman certainly sounds like the solution.

(Andrew Clayman)


Published in The Metro Pulse, April 2007