Grinderman
BY RYAN MARKMANN
In a recent BBC interview, Nick Cave complained that he finds interviews “hugely” counterproductive.
Considering that he recently released and toured behind an ambitious double album with his musical counterpart the Bad Seeds (Abattoir Blues/Lyre of the Orpheus), and wrote a critically acclaimed screenplay and accompanying soundtrack for the gritty Leone-esque The Proposition, all in a little over two years, it’s easy to see why Cave doesn’t care to reflect on the past.
To add to the list, Cave – along with Bad Seeds Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, and Jim Sclavunos – has found time to record Grinderman, an experiment of sorts; more stripped down than the Seeds, but not bordering on chaos like Cave’s earlier work in The Birthday Party.
If you’ve come to expect sweet and merciless piano ballads from Cave, you won’t find them here. In fact, Cave forsakes the ivories altogether for fuzzed-out guitar on “Love Bomb” and the wall-of-noise showcase “Electric Alice.”
Behind the stabbing repetition of Casey’s bass and Sclavunos’s percussion, Ellis joins in the mayhem, mutating his usually transcendent violin into the part of lead guitar, screaming through an assortment of distortion and wah pedals.
With song titles such as “Get It On” and “No Pussy Blues,” Cave wastes no time on metaphor or sentiment. Cave seems preoccupied with sex, or rather, the lack thereof. Rest assured, however, he is having fun, for after repeating the refrain of “I got the no-pussy blues” on the aforementioned song, Cave rimshots with “seems I was wrong with the flowers.”
Recorded in a non-stop, five-day session in a London studio, Grinderman seems about as preconceived as a car crash, and that’s not a bad thing.
Simply put, this is pure punk and blues; not necessarily something you wouldn’t expect from Cave, just long overdue.
(Originally published in the San Antonio Current on March 28, 2007)
In a recent BBC interview, Nick Cave complained that he finds interviews “hugely” counterproductive.
Considering that he recently released and toured behind an ambitious double album with his musical counterpart the Bad Seeds (Abattoir Blues/Lyre of the Orpheus), and wrote a critically acclaimed screenplay and accompanying soundtrack for the gritty Leone-esque The Proposition, all in a little over two years, it’s easy to see why Cave doesn’t care to reflect on the past.
To add to the list, Cave – along with Bad Seeds Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, and Jim Sclavunos – has found time to record Grinderman, an experiment of sorts; more stripped down than the Seeds, but not bordering on chaos like Cave’s earlier work in The Birthday Party.
If you’ve come to expect sweet and merciless piano ballads from Cave, you won’t find them here. In fact, Cave forsakes the ivories altogether for fuzzed-out guitar on “Love Bomb” and the wall-of-noise showcase “Electric Alice.”
Behind the stabbing repetition of Casey’s bass and Sclavunos’s percussion, Ellis joins in the mayhem, mutating his usually transcendent violin into the part of lead guitar, screaming through an assortment of distortion and wah pedals.
With song titles such as “Get It On” and “No Pussy Blues,” Cave wastes no time on metaphor or sentiment. Cave seems preoccupied with sex, or rather, the lack thereof. Rest assured, however, he is having fun, for after repeating the refrain of “I got the no-pussy blues” on the aforementioned song, Cave rimshots with “seems I was wrong with the flowers.”
Recorded in a non-stop, five-day session in a London studio, Grinderman seems about as preconceived as a car crash, and that’s not a bad thing.
Simply put, this is pure punk and blues; not necessarily something you wouldn’t expect from Cave, just long overdue.
(Originally published in the San Antonio Current on March 28, 2007)
posted by Ryan Markmann at
10:06 AM
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