Song, by Toad

I think Nick Cave finishes a whisker below Tom Waits in my personal pantheon of musical heroes. I think. It’s bloody close.

If I were to really have to come down on one side of that argument or another I think it might end up being on the basis that I think Cave has taken marginally more missteps over the course of his career, but then that’s hardly a cut-and-dried assertion. I don’t know.

One difference is that for all the prospect of a chat and a cuppa with Tom Waits would terrify me, I would really rather avoid the same with Mr. Cave. For all that for the most part I worship his artistic output, personally he seems like a right tosser; pretentious, vain, and quite incredibly full of himself. I’m not saying that this is how he is as a person exactly, but it is very much how he comes across to me, and I can’t imagine much good would come of meeting the man – a few too many images to be destroyed that I would prefer to keep intact thank you.

Of course, without that impossibly grandiose attitude his music would never be so good and his live show would be a shadow of its strutting, messianic self, so in wishing it away you’d be stripping the emperor of his clothes. As it is, you just have to accept it as a fundamental part of the pantomime, sit back and enjoy. And if you can do that, then the Bad Seeds’ live show is just scorching. Warren Ellis leaps about at the front like a demented hobo, torturing his violin in a manner that would thin the lips of a classical purist at fifty paces.

Musically, I am reminded of two things: firstly, what a genius this man is. The set list is peppered with old classics like Tupelo and Papa Won’t Leave You Henry, but for the most part songs are drawn from his most recent album Dig, Lazarus Dig. This is the second thing of which I am reminded: a lot of this album really isn’t very good. There are exceptions – Night of the Lotus Eaters, We Call Upon the Author and Dig, Lazarus Dig are just brilliant – but a lot of the others just don’t cut the mustard, especially when surrounded by his older material.

It works very well as a set list though, and this is one of tightest groups you will ever see play live, odd assortment of mad, lecherous old bastards though they may be. And what a brilliant, driven, raging performance for a group of duffers in their 50s. The Rolling Stones had long since given up by this point.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – I Let Love In
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – We Call Upon the Author
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Tupelo

I may be very much in love with Mrs. Toad, but if the opportunity to get a quick divorce were to present itself I may consider it, if just so I could run away in the dead of night with this album. The problem is, it’s so primal it would probably make me its bitch and I would be condemned to a life of gimp masks, beatings and sexual subservience. Mind you, one listen to Go Tell the Women and actually that doesn’t sound too ba… no, no, I’ll stop there.

It’s like that though, this album. Sexually charged, brutal, visceral; it reminds me of those vicious old folk tales of rape and torture and pillage. And it’s all delivered in a festering, menacing piledriver of scabrous blues-rock that quite frankly makes me want to subject myself to its nefarious will for ever more.

Really, given how generally poor the major releases have been so far this year, and the absolute dearth of people continuing to produce excellent music into their dotage (well, musically speaking anyway) this is an absolute rocket delivered squarely up the arse of the rest of the industry. Why the fuck aren’t any of the rest of you this good?

It’s not all the explosion of angry guitars that I was expecting though, although it is a hugely guitar-dominated record. Actually, there’s more simmering menace than there are mental wig-outs. Songs like the smouldering Grinderman, Electric Alice and Go Tell the Women are tense, brooding and threatening. But when they do cut loose and go for it you really get your money’s worth, with tracks like the brilliant single No Pussy Blues – probably Nick Cave’s best raging stalker anthem since the towering Loverman (for ’tis his band, don’t you know – explanation here).

Honestly, I’d post half this album if I thought I could get away with it. If you want feral music with huge fucking balls that you are pretty sure would slam you over the desk and shag you hard up the arse if you turned your back on it for a second, then this is your baby.

Grinderman – Go Tell the Women
Grinderman – Honey Bee (Let’s Fly to Mars)

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