Category: Grinderman

The final single to be released by Grinderman hit the shops featured the blistering opening track from the sophomore album. It was issued in July 2011 on 12″ picture disc:-

mp3 : Grinderman – Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man

I always though that the Disney Corporation might have had something to say about the title of this song, but it seems Mr Cave got away with it.

A live version and a very bizarre remix were put on the b-sides.

mp3 : Grinderman – Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man (Live At Ce Soir (Ou Jamais!))
mp3 : Grinderman – Mickey Bloody Mouse (Joshua Homme Remix)

The former was recorded as part of a performance for French TV recorded on 27 October 2010. The latter is what happens when you let the frontman from Queens of The Stone Age loose on your work.

JC

I mentioned last time out about my unwillingness to get involved in the shenanigans around Record Store Day which means that Palaces of Montezuma is  the only physical copy of a Grinderman single not in the collection.

The facts coming up are that Evil was also part of Record Store Day 2011, but that’s not my recollection.  I certainly picked up a copy outside of RSD and I still smile at the idea of someone at Mute Records coming up with the idea that it be given the catalogue number of MUTE 666.

mp3 : Grinderman – Evil (album version)
mp3 : Grinderman – Evil (The ‘Michael Cliffe House’ Remix)
mp3 : Grinderman – First Evil
mp3 : Grinderman – Evil (‘Silver Alert’ Remix)

The Silver Alert remix has a guest vocal contribution from Matt Beringer of The National and it’s most likely the strangest thing he’s ever done.  All told, it’s a very bizarre and very unconventional 12″.

JC

My unwillingness to get involved in the shenanigans around Record Store Day means that this is the only physical copy of a Grinderman single not in the collection. There are copies available via Discogs, but it’s daft money that’s being asked for.

Palaces of Montezuma was one of the softer tracks on Grinderman 2, which had been released in September 2010. The band announced, in early 2011, that it would be issued, with new mixes, as a digital download and then as a ‘limited to 1000 copies’ 12″ release as part of Record Store Day on 16 April 2011.

It turned out there were two new mixes added in along with the album version and a remix of a further track from Grinderman 2:-

mp3 : Grinderman – Palaces of Montezuma (Cenzo mix)
mp3 : Grinderman – Palaces of Montezuma (Barry Adamson remix)
mp3 : Grinderman – Palaces of Montezuma (album mix)
mp3 : Grinderman – When My Baby Comes (Cat’s Eyes remix)

The Barry Adamson remix is the one that does it for me on this occasion. It was great to see how he and Nick Cave could still work so well together after so many years.

The remix of When My Baby Comes is of real interest.

Cat’s Eyes are a duo comprising Faris Badwan, lead vocalist with The Horrors, and Rachel Zeffira, a Canadian-born Canadian soprano, composer and multi-instrumentalist. The duo are quite unconventional but have gained ever-increasing critical acclaim in recent years, culminating in awards for their film score for the 2014 art-house release The Duke of Burgundy.

JC

The second 45 from to be lifted from Grinderman 2 was another unconventional and far from commercial number. It’s kind of self-deprecating too, what with the protagonoist referring to his girl as a Snake Charmer, Worm Tamer, Serpent Wrangler and Mambo Rider before revealing that she calls him The Loch Ness Monster on account of ‘two big humps and then I’m gone’

It came out on 12″ green vinyl, and in addition to the album version, had a remix and a remake attributed to a collaboration:-

mp3 : Grinderman – Worm Tamer
mp3 : Grinderman – Worm Tamer (A Place To Bury Strangers remix)
mp3 : Grinderman/UNKLE – Hyper Worm Tamer

It reached #52 in the UK singles chart in November 2010. It was one of many tracks which sounded immense and hard when played live on the subsequent tour for the album, as evidenced by this TV appearance:-

The UNKLE collabortion is, however, the real highlight of this release…..

JC

Grinderman was put on hold in 2008 while The Bad Seeds got working on and subsequently toured Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! In late 2009, once again via social media, word began to leak that Grinderman had recorded a second album of guitar-based uncompromising songs which would likely be taken out on the road.

In July 2010, the new single was made available via soundcloud with some words offered up via pitchfork:-

It’s the first single from the second album from Nick Cave’s balls-out Grinderman project. It’s swampy and bluesy and you may feel like you need a wash after listening to it. The “Heathen Child” single is out on limited edition 12″ colored vinyl September 6 and features another version of the song– dubbed “Super Heathen Child”– with an ear-blasting guitar solo from the one and only Robert Fripp (David Bowie, King Crimson).

Word also soon got out that long-time video collaborator, John Hillcoat, had been involved in the promo side of things, but the alleged controversial nature of the film meant you were never likely to catch it on any television screen.

Heathen Child was issued on red 12″ vinyl. It came with an old-fashioned sexist poster featuring a naked woman. If Grinderman were keen to get folk talking, they certainly succeeded:-

mp3 : Grinderman – Heathen Child
mp3 : Grinderman – Star Charmer
mp3 : Grinderman & Fripp – Super Heathen Child

The most surprising thing was that the b-side was a quiet and gentle ballad, giving some evidence that the new album which was due for release just a week later, would be less one-dimensional than the debut. The extended cut with Robert Fripp has his unmistakable guitar licks, quite akin to the Scary Monsters-era Bowie.

Oh and as this isn’t a television station:-

JC

The self-titled Grinderman debut album had been really well received by most folk, with many of the songs being a variation of one sort or the other on Get It On and No Pussy Blues.

There was, however,one song which could just about have got played on daytime radio, being as near to a pop record as Grinderman would ever get, including a sing-a-long chorus. Rather surprisingly, it was selected in April 20007 as the band’s third 45, and like the debut, in a single-sided limited edition 7″ vinyl format, perhaps in the hope of generating some radio exposure and further sales for the album:-

mp3 : Grinderman – (I Don’t Need You To) Set Me Free

Around this time, the members of Grinderman went into the studio along with the other Bad Seeds and quickly recorded what subsequently be the latter band’s fourteenth album Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! which was issued in early 2008.

Grinderman came out of the studio and onto the stage, making some live appearances in the UK before opening some high-profile US shows as the special guests of The White Stripes and then undertaking a theatre tour of Australia, opening for a Nick Cave ‘solo’ set, which consisted of the same band members.

And that was assumed to be that…a one-off 12 month project that had been fun for all concerned. How wrong we all were….

JC

The second Grinderman single is an absolute hoot.

It’s garage-rock with a tune and lyric The Cramps would have been proud of which opens with a middle-aged Lothario singing about his face and body failing him and how he’s reduced to self-love. He then goes on to explain how this state of being has come about, namely that he has been reduced to doing a range of demeaning things in an effort to persuade a woman to have sex with him.

He’s tried changing the sheets on his bed, combing his hair to hide the bald patches and sucking in his gut, all to no avail. He tries poetry, DIY repairs and even petting a revolting pet that she dotes on, but still with no progress towards his goal. In the end, he comes to the conclusion to he ain’t going to get any and it’s given him the blues.

mp3 : Grinderman – No Pussy Blues

All of this could have made for an uncomfortable listen, a song filled withy bitterness and bile, full of misogyny and sexist language; but in the hands of a happily married in real-life composer, it becomes something hilarious and as memorable as any of the weepy ballads that had brought Nick Cave to the attention of a wider public.

The b-side turned out to be a track originally considered for inclusion on what would become the debut Grinderman album but left off at a late stage.

mp3 : Grinderman – Chain of Flowers

As time would demonstrate this was the lightest and softest song that would be recorded under the Grinderman badge – it really should have been kept back for the next Bad Seeds album.

JC

A lazy wee occasional series.

Grinderman came into being in 2006, consisting of Nick Cave and three of his Bad Seeds, Warren Ellis, Jim Sclavunos and Martyn P. Casey. Having undergone an extensive and musically ambitious tour promoting Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheous in which the Bad Seeds had been expanded to include a number of backing singers, the main man wanted to get back to basics and set about writing material akin to the days of The Birthday Party back in the 80s.

Rather than any of its members, and in particular Nick Cave, making themselves available to the media to promote the project, there was instead an extensive use of social media and the internet to get word out about Grinderman with e-mails and texts going to Bad Seeds fans and followers as well as inflential bloggers.

The first ever piece of material was released in the first week of January 2007, consisting of a 7″ single-sided 45 in a limited, numbered edition.

mp3 : Grinderman – Get It On

A magnificent snorting piece of low-fi garage rock and a fabulous calling card that had many of us panting immediately for more. Having said that, a few of the more recent Cave converts, brought to the party by the duet with Kylie and much of the melancholy stuff that he was recording around the turn of the century were a tad bamboozled.

JC