For his latest effort Nick Cave seems to open some wounds and return to a more gutsy sleazy sound with some success. You can’t say much bad about Nick Cave really, he’s had a long career as an early punk inspired punk pioneer, a novelist, and now an aging song writer who draws comparisons to Leonard Cohen, yet still retains an obvious sense of humor about himself (dig the new mustache dude!). This new project Grinderman (watch the video on their website for a convoluted explanation of the name) contains approximately half of the larger 8 piece Bad Seeds band, and Master Nick seems to have put aside the piano and more lush orchestrations of recent records in favor of raw guitar and stripped down more intimate sound. This works pretty well occasionally like on the popular “No Pussy Blues”, however it comes off somewhat flat on other songs like “Grinderman”, and while i know the sparseness was intended to focus you more on the lyrical content or emotional delivery, just seems to need more attention maybe to the atmosphere of sound around it. The project at this time in Cave’s career reminds me somewhat of the great, more successful Bone Machine album by Tom Waits, without all the wonderful noisy percussive experimentation that filled that classic record. If you don’t enjoy this stuff fear not, or fear more, as Nick claims to be returning to the full blown Bad Seeds type material next, carrying the successful elements of this experiment along with him.

Grinderman: BBC Interview
Grinderman: Officially crappy flash website, try to find the navigation