The memorable melodies and riffs are classy and, for wont of a better word, awesome
Looking at the album artwork for this second instalment of the Grinderman franchise, you may become concerned for the relative mental health of Cave and Co. Scrawly, naïve drawings depict various imaginary and real deities from cultures of the world are mashed together in a disturbing pantheistic hot pot.
And the video for Heathen Child is quite a messed up trip – replete with laser-eyes, red-headed black ladies, terrifying wolves and all kinds of ridiculous costumes. The song dichotomises innocence and corruption – the “heathen child” of Cave’s writing is ever-present, and an important part of this commentary on a world where God is dead but religious wars still rage; where the department store is the new church; where sex sells and everyone wants to get what they want.
Because Nick Cave seems to be a walking story, a never-ending body of work; a living character; his whole life part of his artistic oeuvre. Indeed, flashbacks to Cave’s recent, similarly-themed, second novel The Death Of Bunny Munro come through in lyrics and theme – “Poor little moo moo / Papped and Monroed” he sings in Heathen Child. But the deranged sociopathic anarchy of the sexually crazed character of Bunny Munro is also here – the character that seemed to drive the first Grinderman album (of No Pussy Blues and Electric Alice) with an insatiable appetite for hedonism. In Kitchenette, in character Cave sings to a married woman that her husband’s only ever given her some ugly kids, howling at her like a wolf at the moon, pleading with her to leave her man for him.
Perhaps also part of conceit of Grinderman is that the gents are old now. Where The Birthday Party saw a young, thin, messed up boy writhe around on stage to a post-punk cacophony, Grinderman look back on Cave’s career with facial hair, suits and money: and on this album, the later stages of Cave’s career are also taken into account, with elements of Nocturama and The Lyre Of Orpheus coming through on Palaces Of Montezuma, which sounds a lot like Bring It On in harmonies and tone, although the lyrical direction here has changed. Cave still unashamedly sings of love and sacrifice, but his imagery is schizophrenically multi-ethnic and pantheistic. “The epic of Gilgamesh / A pretty little a-line dress / I give to you” he sings, like Andy Warhol remixing Johnny Cash.
There’s a political flavour here too, one that sounds like the weary apathy of age – “You think your government will protect you / You were wrong”, proclaims Cave with a snigger in Heathen Child, which emphasises the power of the individual against the woes and injustices of the (post)modern society. “She don’t care about Allah / She is the Allah / She don’t care about Buddha / She is the Buddha”, he sings for a world where God is dead, fractured and replaced by shopping malls and celebrity glossy mags.
But let’s not get too theoretical here. It would be a crime to ignore the music on this album, which combines Cave’s talent for melodies with an impressive band, who create sexy, dark, catchy songs. The quality of Cave’s voice is powerful – his tone still drips with evocative storytelling, somehow, and the strongest narrative moments on Murder Ballads have echoes here also. “They had pistols and they had guns / They threw me on the ground and they emptied into me”, he sings on When My Baby Comes, which positively pulsates with underlying sexual imagery but functions as a Caveian story of violence and salvation as well.
The memorable melodies and riffs are classy and, for wont of a better word, awesome: there’s a strong “shit yeah” factor here that comes from gentlemen with beards playing self-reflexive rock music about the messed up world we live in. Grinderman 2? Shit yeah.
