Grinderman
Grinderman
It's been said, and it just might be true, that Nick Cave is somewhat of a fraud. That his signature vocal delivery and his obsessively overwrought lyrics are symptomatic of a guy putting on an act.
It's totally true. Just like Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, Cave's work with the Bad Seeds is full of songs that are trying just way too goddamn hard to be little one act plays--Meloy vocalizes some David Eggers, whereas Cave is all about Sam Shepherd by way of Steinbeck. On paper, Cave's stuff is almost completely ridiculous, as anyone who struggled through The Ass Saw The Angel can tell you. Film-wise, Cave's script for the Proposition is pretty standard noir-by-way-of-the West, but John Hillcoat is such a brilliant director that there any of Cave's failings were completely dismantled. On the vocal tip, well, that should be pretty obvious. Does anyone really believe that Nick Cave talks like that? That he orders a cheeseburger and sounds like a cross between Clint Eastwood and a drunk Elvis Presley? Of course not. Nobody talks like that. Hell, James Earl Jones has a terrible stutter. (Still!) Get real.
There's a Warren Ellis that writes comic books, usually about math. He's not the same Warren Elllis who Cave works with on movie scores, or on the Grinderman stuff. Totally different people. One is a guy you wouldn't let into your house, but later you'll wish you did (the music one) and one you'd probably be excited to get coffee with, and then later you'd wish you'd brought a crowbar to jack his eyeballs out with. (The comic one.) You'll have made these mistakes because you judged books by their covers--the musical Ellis looks sort of like Charles Manson on acid, which is just about as unnerving as it sounds, whereas the comic one looks sort of like your next-door neighbors 40 year old son who lives in the basement and plays a lot of ping pong. (By himself!)
There's a song on Grinderman where a guy has green flippers, he sings the blues, he's probably fucking your wife, he's got a pornographic frown, and he's going to skate out of town in the middle of the night to dodge the IRS. Having flippers ain't enough. He's a tax evader too, just like Wesley Snipes. Except he's like Wesley Snipes before you found out that Wesley Snipes beat Halle Berry so bad that she can't hear out of her left ear. You know, back when he was Nino Brown and you liked him, and thought he was cool. And now, even though you might joke about hitting Halle Berry for being such a terrible actress, you don't think it's cool that Wesley Snipes did it for real, because when you were so irritated watching her in X-Men, you weren't serious about it, she's just a crappy actress. Who hits women, anyway? This ain't RUSSIA, for chrissakes. It's America, we don't hit girls. C'mon "WESLEY." In other words, "Get It On" is about Wesley Snipes when he did Drop Zone with Parker Lewis from Parker Lewis Can't Lose, even more so, because the character Cave sings about in "Get It On" probably has that jacket that Parker Lewis' nerdy friend had, the one that he was always pulling surfboards out of. God, that was a great show. So much better than the sitcom based on Ferris Beuller. That shit was awful.
The big single that everybody heard off Grinderman was "No Pussy Blues," a song about all the terribly demeaning shit a guy thinks he needs to put himself through to get laid, when in all truthfulness he should probably just be himself, y'know? Nobody gets turned on by desperation. It's just so unattractive. You don't like my little chihuahua? Fine, that's fine. But I'm more likely to sleep with you if you just say hey, look, your dog. Your dog is fucking disgusting. Get him off my lap, or I'm going throw him into a wall, and I don't care if that pisses you off. Maybe I should just leave. No, I'm not going to do your dishes. We're on a date. Who's ever gotten turned on when a guy says, "god, you're so fucking hot, i just wanna wash your orange juice cup from this morning, oh shit, you had oatmeal, that shit, it's all stuck to the bowl, lemme get that steel wool, that steel wool that makes blue suds, oh you're so goddamn hot."
Some people's version of Grinderman doesn't have that song "Vortex" on it, because some people actually paid for the album, which is so fucking 1995 of them. Too bad, 'cause Vortex is one of the best songs on the album, or on the pre-release mix, or whatever it is you call it when your version of the album has the songs in a different order than the one that costs 17.99. "Vortex" is all about how Nick is gonna "step into the vortex" with you, because that's where you and him can be together. There's not a lot else to say about it, oh except that it's totally bonerific and that it's the perfect description of what everybody wants to do with their special someone, usually on a Sunday evening if the two individuals both have to go work on Monday morning. Like your job all you want, but someday, you're going find somebody that makes you want to call in and say, hey boss--both my parents are dead, i'm never coming back, and oh yeah I'm the one who dropped that deuce that ranked the place last week.
"Don't Set Me Free" is one of those classic "please for the love of god don't dump me, seriously, i know everybody says they'll change, but seriously i WILL change, like Bryan McKnight style change" or it might be one of those classic "i really don't want to do this anymore, don't worry about dumping me, I'm gonna beat you to it, NATCH, don't let the door hit you on the way, on second thought, stand right there, i'm gonna slam it on your head, what, am I the T-1000? Do I look like Robert Patrick? Say it. Say I'm Robert Patrick" songs. In other words, it means whatever you want it to mean, depending on how much you and your special somebody have their shit together. Are you sharing? You better be sharing. Start sharing. Feelings, talk about them.
Everything on Grinderman works out pretty much as fantastically as music can pretty much work out. In a year where everybody, except 50 Cent, worked with a great production staff, Grinderman figured out a way to make an album consisting mostly of songs that sound like they were recorded in a treehouse through a Campbell's soup can connected to a Commodore 64 in a garage somewhere while all the participants were drunk and watching old Depeche Mode videos. It's got the balls of a case of Coors mixed with the fey sensibility of way too much Morrissey, meaning you can believe that the Grinder's would be able to throw down a herculean amount of brewskis while at the same time get their asses totally kicked if there was an actual brawl breaking out. It's one of the most fun albums on this list, yet it's also one of those albums that it's sort of embarrassing to admit how much you're totally in love with--because, really, it's just a big lie. It's blues garage rock in a leisure suit, it's a really exciting bar band, it's a bunch of guys taking the piss. It's, as one of our reviewers put it, flabbergasted we liked it so much, "just like Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion!"
Well, maybe. Maybe it is. But it's the best version of all that bullshit, and it came out this year, and it's in the top five. Go fuck your mother, or something.
-Tucker Stone, 2008
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