Grinderman – Hammersmith Apollo, London – 1/10/10
5/5
By: Thomas Hannan
In the ongoing battle for artistic supremacy between passion and precision, the former is delighted to be able to count Grinderman amongst its ranks. Even though the greatest side project ever (that includes you, Gorillaz) are indeed a slicker, leaner machine on their second LP than the one that delivered their self titled debut – in light of recent events, now referred to as Grinderman 1? – what strikes you first about Nick Cave’s comically misogynist rabble is that they still can’t play their instruments particularly well at all.
Of course, Cave scholars all agree that this was the very point of Grinderman in the first place, to get back to the primal thrill of playing rock and roll by picking up musical tools the band could only get a handful of notes out of. But I expected that after two rightly critically acclaimed albums, numerous world tours and months of rehearsal, Nick Cave might have at least learnt to actually strum a guitar rather than violently molest it in repeated down-strokes with what seems like the inside of his wrist.
A smile crosses my face as I realise both that I was wrong and foolish to expect such a thing. He might have been referring to his own, far less confrontational music when he said it, but I’m reminded of the words of Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis – “Before you learn to play two notes, learn how to play one note well. And before you play one note, have a damn good reason for playing it.” Grinderman have learnt to play these instruments just enough to suit their relentlessly gritty, streamlined purposes, and then lost interest in getting any better at them. Become any more technically adept, and they risk appealing to Oasis fans.
It doesn’t mean that the quartet is in any way sloppy – you can be a tight unit without unleashing constant unnecessary guitar solos (when Warren Ellis does let rip with a solo, it’s one constructed wholly of contorted noises as opposed to recognisable notes). Grinderman are punishingly tight, each of their instruments operating more like a hammer than anything designed to be responsible for melody or sonic embellishment.
Their manifesto upon formation might have been “no pianos, no god, no love” (three things Grinderman avoided in order to separate their work from that of parent band The Bad Seeds), but there are signs that even if the former pair remain absent from the outfit in question’s canon, affairs of the heart might be creeping in after all. Is Cave admitting perhaps that his groin and his heart might not be as separate as Grinderman 1 might have so wickedly purported? Tonight, there are moments that border on the tender, ‘Palaces Of Montezuma’, dedicated in a round about way to his wife, is especially full of such male-to-female sentimentality and melodic familiarity that it wouldn’t sound out of place on a Lightning Seeds record (noted my girlfriend, wisely).
But in the more confrontational, animalistic moments the lines between Grinderman and The Bad Seeds (particularly post-Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!) blur even further, and to thrilling effect. ‘Evil’ is delivered with precisely the same fervour the Seeds reserved for the moments when they dusted off ‘Hard On For Love’ on the Lazarus tour, and the stage personas of Cave, Ellis and rhythm section of Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavenous remain exactly as you’ll have seen them before. It’s just that, if anything, Cave’s music with Grinderman suits his involuntary, lecherous lunging and pointing at the audience far better than it has than for anything since ‘Stagger Lee’. Warren Ellis? He still jumps and hits stuff, a lot, perhaps without ever really knowing what sound’s about to come out of whatever it is he’s hitting. Perhaps not caring.
That said, these renditions of songs like ‘Get It On’, ‘Heathen Child’ and tonight’s impeccably exhausting run through ‘No Pussy Blues’ stop you pondering about relationships between bands, the relative musical talents of their performers, or really anything other than the fact that this is inarguably some of the best music these gentlemen have been responsible for across their entire careers. When you think about what music that actually involves – everything from The Birthday Party to The Dirty Three – you realise what a staggering achievement Grinderman have made in living up to it.
Artists in this article: Grinderman
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