- Mon, 2010-09-27 11:37
While Nick Cave’s musical output has always been characterised by an obsession with death, sex, love and violence, it has been in the work of Grinderman that he has surrendered to these preoccupations most fully, allowing them to air their malevolence unchecked. But while the first Grinderman album flailed its limbs and shouted its dementia to the world, Grinderman 2 is more ominous for its ability to hide its psychosis behind a calm front, from behind which it then bursts with heightened potency.
The instruments are characterised throughout by an animalistic energy; brutish and raw. On Mickey Mouse & The Goodbye Man the guitars hang on Cave’s every word, quietly murmuring their agreement before exploding into excited frenzy as the twisted tale reaches its climax. Worm Tamer sees an organ wheeze greedily along to the lusty boasts, while the panting bass of Heathen Child is joined by guitars that wail in spiritual agony. When My Baby Comes skulks resentfully for three and some minutes, draped in weeping strings, before slowly letting its sorrow build into a gasping maelstrom of noise that buffets you about roughly.
Elsewhere the band create their unsettling vibe by presenting you with a friendly façade that they slowly pick apart. What I Know, for example, should be a touching ballad from the same stable as late-era Johnny Cash. Instead, Cave’s brittle croon is lent a threatening undertone by the discordant sound of hissing air and creaking metal. Similarly, Evil contrasts sweet vocal harmonies with chants of “evil, evil, evil” as desperation seeps into the voice of the scorned lover pleading for his baby back, and Palaces Of Montezuma’s breezy confidence just fails to divert attention from such unhinged pledges as “the spinal cord of JFK wrapped in Marilyn Monroe’s negligee I give to you.”
Kitchenette provides the album’s darkest moment, its wild swamp-blues saturated with a menace appropriate for the lyrics; the song’s main refrain may be “I want you to be my girl,” but this seemingly tender sentiment sits side-by-side with statements like “I’m gonna get a pot to cook you in,” and “what’s this husband of yours ever given to you? The ugliest fucking kids I’ve ever seen.” Almost as ominous is album closer Bellringer Blues, which, though lyrically not as unsettling, suffocates you with whining guitars that coalesce and curdle into a thick, sticky groove that oozes over you with its relentless rhythm and crowded soundscape.
Like the id of a diseased mind let loose, Grinderman 2 invites you into a tempestuous world dominated by sex and violence, a world that is all the more affecting for its nuance and unpredictability. Sometimes alarming, often unsettling, but constantly captivating.
