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Underground > Radio & Music >

Grinderman

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21:40 / 27.12.06

Grinderman. Grinderman. Gri-i-i-i-inderman.

Nick Cave and three-fifths of the Bad Seeds are Grinderman! Song titles like "Get It On" and "No Pussy Blues" are Grinderman! Guitar-based rifforama blues-rock are Grinderman!

HEAR! Cave play guitar! HEAR! Warren Ellis eschew his poncy violin for good old=fashioned electric guitar wrangling! HEAR! Cave's mustache bellow stompy blues stomps like "Love Bomb"!

SEE! Mick Harvey weep bitterly over his Serge Gainsbourg records, knowing he has missed the boat—the rampaging, thundering, blues juggernaut boat that is Grinderman!

Grinderman! Grinding your way in 2007—grinding you down to a nub!

Gri-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-inderma-a-a-a-a-an!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:15 / 27.12.06

Album due in March and I can't fucking wait!!!

22:19 / 27.12.06

GRINDERMAN SAYS

OBEY THE 'TACHE.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:57 / 27.12.06

And now all I have to do is procure ATP tickets for their first show!!!

Hmm. Easier said than done.

Haven't heard Get It On yet, but No Pussy Blues is the absolute dog's bollocks.

01:54 / 28.12.06

At this point, I'm wondering what I'd do about my hair, if I was Nick Cave.

The 'tache is good, but what about the rest of it? What used to be known as a 'prison crop' might be all right for a while, but then again, he's on record as hating those. And Pete Doherty's recent antics have ruled out hats for the next thirty or so years, really. For all a decent fedora would suit Nick Cave very well, I think. If he got something done about the back and sides.

It's a horrible dilemna, but it's one he's going to have to face up to, directly.

'Grinderman' as a side project, then, seems a bit nebulous - I wonder what point he's trying to get across?

02:27 / 28.12.06

That, upon hitting fifty, he's realized that maybe he always wanted to be in Foghat all along.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

05:13 / 28.12.06

I came across this lot on The Hype Machine and found it pleasant enough, and this from someone who once wrote into one of those TV programs who answer questions from the public on how to build a trebuchet big enough to fling all of the Bad Seeds the fuck away should they ever come near me.

08:04 / 28.12.06

Oh come on Our Lady, even at the stage in their career I'm guessing you'd have found most objectionable (mid to late Eighties?) they'd at least have been able to score some of the special stuff for you, if you'd made friends with them first?

You can't really say fairer than that, can you?

08:30 / 28.12.06

That, upon hitting fifty, he's realized that maybe he always wanted to be in Foghat all along

He might have 'realised' that, and if so, I suppose he might have made a wrong turning somewhere, but as for 'realizing' anything ... well it's not even really a word, is it?

Benefit of the doubt, though - It's probably a *typo*. On behalf of the English (not American, English)language, I'm prepared to accept your apology. This one time. I may seem like a pederast for even mentioning this, but it seems to me that one minute you're saying 'z' instead of 's', and the next you're bombing well-meaning Islamic countries back to the frikkin' stone age ...?

10:56 / 28.12.06

If "realize" is good enough for the Flaming Lips, it's good enough for me.

Crux Is This City's Protector.

13:28 / 28.12.06

Man, that was a lotta verbiage to devote to Am v. Br English conventions.

As for me, I'm just perpetually confused that Nick Cave's new band doesn't sound more like Napalm Death.

10:26 / 29.12.06

Death to the Bad Seeds - Bring in the Grinderman!

These are actually the three best songs I've heard from the 'tached one since No More Shall We Part, why can't it be out tomorrow? *throws toys out of pram*

10:29 / 29.12.06

Actually...soulseek, you daddy...

17:20 / 29.12.06

Have you heard the last Bad Seeds album though, TP? On this showing anyway, there doesn't seem to be anything in the Grinderman ouevre that wouldn't have slotted in quite happily on there. Unless it's for contractual reasons, I'm a bit bewildered by the thinking behind this ultimately fairly irritating side project - Anyone who's familiar with Nick Cave's work is going to know exactly who it is after about ten seconds, and anyone who isn't is going to like it or hate it in roughly equal measure as what they would have done if they'd heard a Bad Seeds album instead. The phrase 'busman's holiday' springs immediately to mind.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:22 / 29.12.06

It ain't the Bad Seeds if Mick Harvey's not on it, basically, Alex, as far as I can tell.

08:24 / 30.12.06

They stopped being the Bad Seeds when Blixa Bargeld left.

In fact Cave stopped being Cave when Bargeld left.

Now they're Nature Boy Nick and his Folk Rock Ensemble.

10:57 / 30.12.06

They stopped being the Bad Seeds when Blixa Bargeld left.

Strong truth Seth! What made the last Bad Seeds album so annoying was its purported stripped down nature when in fact it was their most busy and unfocussed. It seemed that for the sake of being a real band everyone had to have their ha'penny and a bean's worth of rawk on each song. This was especially true of the cd that wasn't 'The Lyre of Orpheus' which Grinderman most resembles.

What was always great about the Bad Seeds was their ability of spreading out all the musicians over a whole record, making it more gothic or mournful or whatever depending on who was playing...not the case any more - at least to my ears. Whatsmore, this album seems to sound like equal parts recent warbling Nick and tight Spacemen 3/Stooges mad boogie Nick. This makes me more happy than the reedy soulman of the last two records at any rate, although if the actual release (not just the leaked version) will actually carry that through I can only hope.

Jack The Bodiless

10:43 / 04.01.07

I love the way everyone has a different Bad Seeds Shark Jumping album. No More Shall We Part! Murder Ballads! BOATMAN'S CALL (yeah, honestly, I've actually heard that one)!!!

But they're not nearly as good as they used to be, clearly. It's not that I've unconsciously ingested the lazy music journalist's cliched reviewing vocabulary in the last 20 years and actually believe that consecutive albums sounding different is in some way a decline you can track on a graph! That would be MENTAL DERREN BROWN/PAUL McKENNA SHIT!

The fucking NME has a lot to answer for.

uncle retrospective

10:53 / 04.01.07

The Boatman's Call is rubbish.
There I've said it. Dull, flat and only two good songs. Let Love In was the last Great Cave album.
*Duck & Covers*
Looking forward to Grinderman, Nick sounds angry again.

12:10 / 04.01.07

Heard a couple of tracks of this Grinderman business on the radio actually... it is loud and faintly alarming and kinda vaguely obscene, which is good, and instantly makes it better than anything else Cave has come up with during my adult life.

But doesn't anybody else think it sounds a bit kinda forced, a bit desperate (and not in the good way)? A bit like the modern equivalent of some kinda godawful "whatever-happened-to-our-good-ol-simple-rock-n-roll" styled mid-70s blues jams? Doesn't anybody have the time or imagination to seek out the many, many younger, more geniunely punk groups who harness this kind of energy more naturally and convincingly?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:11 / 04.01.07

On the strength of this thread, I've gone back to my least favourite Bad Seeds album, Nocturama, and fuck me if it isn't actually rather good. Worst Bad Seeds album still, but a metric shitload better than most people could manage on a good day.

Apart from Rock of Gibraltar, which is balls.

14:29 / 04.01.07

Doesn't anybody have the time or imagination to seek out the many, many younger, more geniunely punk groups who harness this kind of energy more naturally and convincingly?

Do you mean The Horrors?

Until any one of these groups (and who are they anyway, when they're at home?) comes up with something as good as 'Mutiny In Heaven' or 'Jennifer's Veil' I fear the answer is no.

I suppose I'm just troubled, deep in my soul, by Grinderman because it seems to me as if the Bad Seeds were finally getting back on track after over a decade of being a band that in principle were great, but in reality (as perceived by me anyway, here in the Twilight Home For The Terminally Bewildered, ok,) were a bit of a letdown. Basically, I like the side of Nick Cave that thinks 'feelings are a bourgeois indulgence', and enjoys black humour set to music that sounds like it took about half an hour to record. So I should like Grinderman, but ... I don't know, it seems unnecessary somehow.

On the subject of 'The Boatman's Call', hasn't the author himself pretty much dismissed it as the work of 'some guy whining about being dumped', or related?

And on the subject of 'The Rock Of Gibraltar', which I've never heard ... What is it about it that's so terrible?

14:51 / 04.01.07

Do you mean The Horrors?

Huh?

Having just googled them: NO I DO NOT!

It's kind of nice to see some kids giving props to Screamin' Lord Sutch tho.

15:06 / 04.01.07

Until any one of these groups comes up with something as good as 'Mutiny In Heaven' or 'Jennifer's Veil' I fear the answer is no.

I entirely agree actually, but then as a huge fan of The Birthday Party, I have always tended to approach solo Cave with a similar feeling.

(and who are they anyway, when they're at home?)

Oh, I dunno, I guess I mean like umm.... Penthouse (who split up how many years ago?), Oxbow, Coughs, Lords, Hunting Lodge, I'm Being Good, Noxagt, Todd etc, just off the top of my head, maybe even the likes of the Immortal Lee County Killers, Cheater Slicks, The Hunches, Black Lips etc from the garage/blues end of things... I don't even listen to these kind of bands much these days to be honest so maybe my above refs aren't spot on, but ugly, fucked up, chaotic, macho rock music isn't exactly a dying art is what I'm getting at.

16:52 / 04.01.07

Mr R, I think the blues is at it's best when it's arty and dying (this is hardly a new thing - Robert Johnson was both to really the best degree, surely, damnit,) but I don't see the point of the sort of inchoate rage in the bands that you've mentioned. Were I, hypothetically, to be a member of such a band, if I was the drummer, say, I'd be encouraging the guys in the group to think about Neil Diamond. Even though I hate him, he's a great songwriter.

I have always felt, and I think I can say this, here in the emotional Disney Castle that I call my world once the made have ... have turned into dreams, in some sense.

18:25 / 04.01.07

Well.. Right on man!

Again, I entirely agree.

Don't mind me, I was just bored in work today and thought I'd try and stir things up by, like, questioning Nick Cave's artistic validity or somesuch.

19:24 / 04.01.07

GRINDERMAN SAYS

WELL I NEVER!

20:06 / 04.01.07

You may mock, JF, but I, like you, am potentially less than a month away from a set of whiskers along the lines depicted.

Unless it turns out that for whatever reason, I am teh lame.

21:03 / 04.01.07

Oh, come on; what are the odds of that?

01:02 / 05.01.07

I haven't heard Grinderman yet, so why are they already synonymous with Tin Machine?

01:06 / 05.01.07

That's a bloody good point, you handsome swine.

Jack The Bodiless

12:22 / 05.01.07

You know, it's always possible that this is just supposed to be a bit of fun, and that people are taking it just a little bit too seriously because it's Cave. Just a thought.

Jack The Bodiless

12:25 / 05.01.07

From the myspace page:-

'"This song is sung across an excoriating mandolin loop based on an obscure lute melody from the 11th century," suggests Ellis.

"It is a lament for the messianic rock n.. roll hero," says the virile and youthful Cave, "and begins, of course, with a statement of intent."

"Mice, dogs, baboons, hyenas", says Marty, Zen-like in the corner.

"Yeah, well, for me all the enemies of inspiration assume animal shapes," explains Cave, "they are all around us...and of course, inside us."

"From all the loops I originally sent you, this was the first one that really cried out to be used," mumbles Ellis, from the black hole in his shovel-shaped beard.

"Yeah, it grinds...it ground..." growls Sclavunos.'

If you read the above aloud, it sounds very much like the sound of a hellbunny resting its case.

12:38 / 05.01.07

Well yeah, but if his fanbase treats all this as a laugh to the extent of not actually buying the album, Grinderman will have a sad face, not a happy one.

12:56 / 05.01.07

Nonsense. Grinderman is about four guys, four friends, rockin' out and havin' fun; you can't hang a sad face on that.

And y'know what? I liked Tin Machine, and I liked 'em for just that reason. It was Bowie and Reeves and the Sales boys bringing the rock, kicking out the jams, and generally having a noisy good time. It's fun to hear people having fun.

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