Grinderman - Grinderman 2

Grinderman
Grinderman 2

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The second round of Grinderman mayhem opens with Nick Cave in midlife crisis mode, announcing to the universe, ‘I woke up this morning and I thought “what am I doing?”’ With the first Grinderman album (Cave’s sideproject with a few fellow Badseeds, principally Warren Ellis), many were left asking exactly that, dismissing it as little more than an exercise in grossly indulgent whining from a bunch of aging lotharios. But those who managed to discern the blaring self-parody underscoring the lewd posturing of songs like ‘No Pussy Blues’ will find much to enjoy in this sequel of razorbacked blues and whirring psychedelia.

The absurd deadpan tone of the first album is carried here by songs like first single ‘Heathen Child,’ Cave mocking the existential quandaries that plague the young with some surreal lyrics delivered with a leer and a snicker. But he’s at his best in the role of arch-seducer (aka dirty old man), like on ‘Worm Tamer’ or ‘Kitchenette’ – with lines like ‘I stick my fingers in your biscuit jar / and crush all your gingerbread men’ delivered in a voice dripping with post-peepshow mank.

Not that the lecherous and the grotesque are the only tones striven for here – they’re just the ones that Cave and co. seem to relish most. ‘When My Baby Comes’ contains all the mawkish desperation of the washed-up flip-side to the Grinderman persona; ditto the rasping pathos of ‘What I Know’.


There are misfirings sure, but if you’re in on the joke then Grinderman 2 is plenty fun. And if not, well, you can clean yourself up.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 377, August 30th 2010