Grinderman
Grinderman II
Mute/Anti
When the first
Grinderman record
hit in 2007, it
seemed to signal
a kind of second
(or third . . . or
fourth) adolescence
for Nick Cave.
Working with Bad Seeds Warren Ellis and
Martyn Casey and former Sonic Youth drummer
Jim Sclavunos, Grinderman achieved a
raw, stripped-down rock ensemble sound that
felt like the Birthday Party (Cave’s first band of
note) revisited 20 years down the line and trading
numbers with a faded bar band covering
Tonight’s the Night and
Nebraska.
On
Grinderman II there’s a little bit less of the
blues balladry and an extra helping of the sinister
savagery—thanks in large part to the chainsaw-
buzzing and horror film-slashing guitar of
Warren Ellis. A longtime Cave conspirator, Ellis
seems to have a telepathic sense for punctuating
Cave’s city-cool, punk-preacher verses—a
facility on plain display on the opening cut
“Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man” and
“Heathen Child.” Ellis’s tones are grotesque
and delicious, peppered with grinding fuzz and
positively filthy wah sweeps and dashes that
makes a perfect sonic picture of Grinderman’s
wonderfully lecherous, sleazy, leering miscreant
persona. Nastiness!