Is it just me, or did it suddenly get kinda butch in here? I mean, the amount of testosterone coming out of the discerning listener’s speakers at the moment is really quite intimidating. What with Michael Gira‘s reactivated-and-all-male-again Swans trying to frighten you into an early grave, and Grinderman back to try to “charm” you into bed with a bottle of Jack and a handful of pills, I have to wonder why. (Or “Y”. That was a very poor joke for genetics geeks there. Sorry).
A couple of years ago, when Nick Cave first announced the Grinderman project, there were a lot of theories, fears and expectations doing the rounds. Was this Cave trying to get back to his dirty, sex’n’violence roots in The Birthday Party? Was this the mid-life crisis of an ageing lothario-turned lecher? Worse, was this TIN MACHINE??? Then it came out, and everyone fell over themselves to love it. It was very good indeed. For me, it was the musical equivalent of Chuck Pahlaniuk‘s Fight Club – simultaneously a love letter to, and a bleakly hilarious critique of, traditional conceptions of masculinity. But could it sustain another album, or was Grinderman a one-joke bloke?
Suffice it to say, yes it can, and no they weren’t. The lads clearly haven’t been taking the bromide they were almost certainly prescribed after the first album, and are back, as sleazy, as dirty and as savagely funny as before. Although they missed the opportunity to call the album Grinderman 2 – Electric Boogaloo, which is something of a shame, really. But that’s about it as far as disappointment goes. A deceptive opening, sounding not a million miles away from Arab Strap (another band who were no strangers to finding the lighter side of the darker side of human sexuality), ends up becoming “Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man,” which is probably what it would sound like if Patti Smith were to re-record her version of “Gloria” with Pussy Galore as her backing band. And if Patti Smith was a dude.
Grinderman 2 isn’t quite as eclectic as the first, but makes up for it by sounding like Iggy And The Stooges‘ Raw Power if you could actually hear the tunes. It’s loud, it’s grubby, it’s good-time rock’n’roll, and it wants to fuck your sister. And your mum. And possibly your dog. The two major exceptions to this are “What I Know,” which sounds to my jaded ears like a drunk man singing to himself while pissing, until eventually the inhabitants of the other toilet stalls join in, but is no less awesome for all that; and “Palaces Of Montezuma,” which does a fair stab at 80s AOR, except it’s hard to imagine Huey Lewis offering the object of his desire “the spinal cord of JFK wrapped in Marilyn Monroe’s negligee” as a love token.
Despite all this, there’s also a lot of interesting, rather than just loud, stuff going on on the musical side. “Kitchenette,” a song which sees Cave in full-on Death Of Bunny Munro mode, all ludicrously inappropriate sexual metaphor and lecherous swagger, with an undercurrent of incipient mental collapse, has a bass line which actually SOUNDS like a gyrating pelvis. And album closer “Bellringer Blues” is very much the sound of Grinderman, having somehow gone back in time, invading the studio where The Beatles are trying to record Tomorrow Never Knows, taking their trousers and pants off and performing a guerilla gig until eventually Sir Paul bursts into tears and goes home. And once “Evil” gets into its stride, it could almost BE the aforementioned Swans, except they’d all be smiling. Sleazily.
For me, though, the track which sums up not just this album but Grinderman in general has to be “Worm Tamer.” Now this is the kind of track where any other “none more straight male” artiste would boast, in terms either cloaked or not-so-cloaked (and let’s face it, probably 90% of these guys HAVE done a song like this at one time or another- I mean, that wasn’t a REAL spacehopper Julian Cope sang about, was it?) about their nob. But this is Cave, and this is Grinderman, and things aren’t so simple (indeed, given Cave’s seriously cultural caché in recent years, someone’s probably quoting this song in a thesis right now. Hopefully a thesis entitled The Dick Joke As A Signifier Of Constructions Of Masculinity In The Early 21st Century) . “My baby calls me the Loch Ness Monster”, he proudly sings, “A couple of great big humps and then I’m gone.” Imagine, if you will, Zodiac Mindwarp with a sense of perspective. Actually, on second thoughts, don’t. That would be rubbish.
And Grinderman 2 isn’t rubbish, apart from that “not ending in Electric Boogaloo” album title. It’s very, very good indeed. It’s everything the first one was, only brasher, sleazier, and more coherent, as if after dicking around for a bit (pun, obviously, completely intended) they’ve finally settled on a signature sound, and they’ve played the ass off it. The jokes are still wickedly cruel and hilariously WRONG, the groove’s there in full effect, and the guitars are fuzzed and wah-wahed to the max. Oh, and the strings are nice too. So, to conclude – it’s not the mid-life crisis of an aging lothario-turned lecher, it’s not just a retread of the first album, it’s not in any way suffering from Difficult Second Album syndrome.
But most importantly, it’s NOT TIN MACHINE 2.
-Deuteronemu 90210, who, though you can’t actually see it online, drew cocks all over the margins of this review-
