Grinderman [PA]

Performer: Grinderman
Engineer: Matt Lawrence; Dominic Morley; Nick Launay
Producer: Nick Launay
Distributor: Alternative Dis. Alliance

Notes: Grinderman: Jim Sclavunos, Martyn Casey, Nick Cave, Warren Ellis. Personnel: Nick Cave (vocals, electric guitar, piano, organ); Warren Ellis (acoustic guitar, viola, background vocals); Martyn Casey (acoustic guitar, background vocals); Jim Sclavunos (drums, percussion, background vocals). Recording information: Metropolis Studio, London, England (2006); RAK (2006). Photographer: Polly Borland. Unknown Contributor Role: Jim Sclavunos. Beginning sometime in the mid-to-late 1990s, Nick Cave's output became increasingly nuanced, introspective, and even tender. While he was still capable of a snarling rocker now and again, he'd certainly mellowed by the turn of the new millennium. Then came 2007 and the arrival of the mighty Grinderman, a Cave-fronted band featuring longtime colleagues Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, and Jim Sclavunos. The project marks the first time Cave has ever been featured on guitar, and the first time since nearly the Birthday Party that he's approached his music with such libidinal urgency and swaggering gothic machismo. The music screeches, lurches, and clangs with a loose abandon that reimagines Cave's earlier incarnations in a more self-effacing guise. While Cave's lyrics are as considered and darkly literary as ever, there's humor here ("No Pussy Blues," "Depth Charge"), and the general improvisatory, spontaneous nature of the project is obviously being enjoyed by all. GRINDERMAN is delicious proof that Nick the Stripper isn't gone after all. Parents, lock up the kiddies, it's show time.

Spin (p.86) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Cave channels the primal misanthropy he explored 30 years ago with the Birthday Party in breakneck scuzz-fuzz freak-outs." Entertainment Weekly (p.72) - "[T]he band whips up an unusually fierce racket...with Cave in finest tortured-yowl form..." Q (p.112) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "Best of all is 'Set Me Free,' a classic, stomping Bad Seeds-style blues....Grinderman has the power of Cave's best work, without ever eclipsing it." Alternative Press (p.150) - 4.5 stars out of 5 -- "11 tracks that scorch the earth lesser bands traipse on....[Cave's lyrics are] filled with an arrogance and swagger usually emanating from drifters and organized crime bosses." Alternative Press (p.128) - Included in Alternative Press's '10 Essential Albums Of 2007' -- "[T]he band trade the Seeds' trademark lushness for attitudinal energy and a stripped-down animal impulsiveness..." The Wire (p.35) - Included in The Wire's "50 Records of the Year 2007". No Depression (p.98) - "Nick Cave hasn't sounded this unhinged in ages....The sound they make is darker, more disruptive and a good deal funnier than any recent Bad Seeds output."

Indie "supergroup" Grinderman (featuring Bad Seed Martyn P. Casey, Warren Ellis of the Dirty Three, and drummer Jim Sclavunos) were hardly on a par commercially with million-selling behemoths of Asia or Bad Company (or even the Raconteurs for that matter), but Grinderman also boasted the cult figure's cult figure in Nick Cave. By no means a vanity project or a tepid exercise in reclaiming past glories, rather the raging, primal blues of Grinderman's 2007debut made for a howling musical catharsis that recalled Nick the Stripper's earlier band, the Birthday Party.

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