Grinderman - Grinderman 2

Although the side project is an inherently interesting creature, it’s hard not to feel that it has suffered some abuse of late. The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers springs to mind with his recent solo effort Flamingo. Fans shouldn’t construe this as an attack on his music; the album’s content was perfectly adequate and the moustachioed acorn fell very close to the oak tree’s oeuvre. But that’s precisely the problem, shouldn’t the side project be an escape from the day job rather than a regurgitation of it? As nice as a Killers album with a sleeve that only features one morose face instead of four is, it’s just not something anyone needs. When Flowers featured on Jools Holland’s show in September, he should’ve been taking notes from the quartet across the studio from him; members of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds by day, something altogether different by night…

Grinderman began back in 2006 when Cave began turning to his basic guitar skills for artistic inspiration, enabling a more testosterone-fuelled approach to songwriting. Joined by three of his bandmates, the ensuing belt-sander of a debut record was at once a throwback to Cave’s youth as a member of post-punk group The Birthday Party and a glimpse into a rarely exposed facet of the mature man’s personality.

At first glance, the Aussie outfit seem to have grabbed the ‘difficult second album’ by the balls, the minimal-effort title giving the impression four seasoned professionals unfazed by a pressure to please. It’s an attitude that also permeates the music, the riff of ‘Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man’ launched from a misleadingly ambient opening like a smack in the face, Cave snarling as he spins a narrative of violence colliding with domesticity.

Lyrically Grinderman 2 is an understated affair; Cave reins in his revered balladry, instead utilising repetition of bold, often threatening statements for maximum impact. It’s a wise move; more complex prose would be wasted in a musical landscape such as this. The Grinderman sound is edgy, highly aggressive, as expansive as a Sergio Leone film but simultaneously gritty and taut. The ferocious swells of fast-paced ‘Worm Tamer’ seem to flow from a force of nature and even the initially lighter ‘When My Baby Comes’ gradually evolves into a heavyweight rocker, a burning mass of shattering drums and throbbing bass, all dripping in guitar distortion. The rawness of it all makes it sound less like an album and more like a bottled live band; it’s completely thrilling.

While all this might appear to be catapulting Grinderman into today’s ‘lad rock’ pigeonhole alongside the likes of Kasabian, the tumult instead makes it all the more effective when Cave & Co. finally do put the handbrake on and open up in softly-spoken centrepiece ‘What I Know’ before upsetting the balance once more. While many ‘man bands’ fall short when it comes to emotional engagement, Grinderman pull no punches, confronting all sorts of insecurities head-on, from loneliness to sexual inadequacy. If this is lad rock, it’s lad rock for the twenty-first century. Thanks are due to these Bad Seeds for giving us a truly worthwhile side project; long may Nick Cave need an outlet for his masculinity.

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