Album review: Grinderman

Published on Sunday 12 September 2010 17:10

GRINDERMAN Grinderman 2 ***** Mute STUMM299, £12.99

Lithe and laviscious, Nick Cave's Grinderman have more energy than young punk pups less than half their age, and considerably more musical bite. The psychedelic Bo Diddley shuffle that propels Worm Tamer into the subconscious typifies the debauched raunch and roll of this album.

It sounds like it was recorded in the exit lounge bar for Hades, with its preposterous lyrics about the Loch Ness Monster ("two huge humps then I'm gone") and nasty snarl in the tail.

More reflective, if not less dark, are When My Baby Comes, and The Palaces Of Montezuma, with its slick reference to Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw, not to mention "the spinal cord of JFK wrapped in Marilyn Monroe's negligee," a strong contender for couplet of the year.

Bellringer Blues unravels like a long lost 70s prog rock classic, with wailing organ and bleeping guitars. This is the sound of middle-aged men having a good time, with twisted pseudo-Biblical references adding to the mystique. The three Bad Seeds have never sounded badder than in the Grinderman incarnation, offering genuine menace in their malevolence, and this album is post-apocalyptic cabaret of the highest order.

Download this: Worm Tamer, Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man