|
 Raw
Power
By
John Brodeur
Grinderman
Grinderman
(Anti)
After 30 years of making raw, rough, dirty music, it shouldn’t
have come as a surprise that Nick Cave would produce an album
as raw, rough and dirty as Grinderman’s self-titled debut.
So why is it that Grinderman feels like such a departure
for the notoriously sharp-tongued Aussie? Cave spent most
of the last decade softening his blows, molding his schtick
from raving lunatic to full-on crooner for recent recordings,
while the music of his band, the Bad Seeds, has grown prettier,
more orchestral, over the years. 2005’s Abattoir Blues/The
Lyre of Orpheus double-disc set reeked of gloom and grandeur;
it was also the most accomplished set of Cave’s late career.
Still, anyone who saw last year’s Cave-penned film The
Proposition knows the guy’s taste for blood—and grandeur,
although he wasn’t personally responsible for the cinematography—hasn’t
ebbed.
So Cave, playing electric guitar for the first time in his
career, along with a truncated version of the Bad Seeds (bassist
Martyn Casey, and drummer Jim Sclavunos, and indispensable
multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis), spends the first quarter
of Grinderman reminding us that he’s got the best rant
in the business. “Get It On” is a belligerent mess right out
of the gate; “No Pussy Blues”—it’s exactly what you think—adds
pent-up frustration to the mix. The title track is violent,
edgy, and unsettling, a horror-movie soundtrack without the
movie. Early on, Grinderman sounds like a Steve Albini-produced
version of the Stooges’ Fun House (not to be confused
with the Steve Albini-produced Stooges turd from earlier this
year).
The record mellows a bit with the Leonard Cohen-esque ballad
“Chain of Flowers”; the sparse, melancholy “Vortex” could
be a Bad Seeds holdover. But the Cave trademarks are all here:
“I am not a peaceful man,” he sings on album-proper-closer
“Rise” (a second version of “Get It On” is tacked on the end),
Ellis’ shrill, detuned violin snaking in and out of the mix,
creating unrest. On further inspection the lyrics aren’t nearly
as sinister as one might first suspect—stuff about dreamers
in the silver rain and whatnot. But Nick Cave could chill
your blood by reading a supermarket circular; even when he’s
trying to be nice, he still sounds like a creep.
Grinderman
is, in a word, loose, the wildest and least-refined Cave-related
release in two decades, its roughshod energy harkening back
to the post-punk cacophony of the Birthday Party. The songs
reportedly evolved from jam sessions, and the recordings convey
the boiling, spontaneous energy of a band playing a new song
for the first or second time. Grinderman sound like a new
band; Cave, a new man.
 The
Sea and Cake
Everybody
(Thrill Jockey)
The Sea and Cake’s latest full-length release comes after
a four-year gap, and is their most robust. The sound is more
expansive, in large part due to it being less dependent on
overdubs, and more on the live interactions of the quartet.
This process was also aided by their enlisting an outside
producer, Brian Paulson (Wilco, Slint), freeing John McEntire
to stay put at the trap set and focus solely on being the
drummer this time out. While the 10 songs come to only 36
minutes, it’s such a varied set, powered by relaxed tempos,
that the time stretches to fit the inside of any listener’s
head. Subtle complexities are strewn throughout the set. The
African highlife groove of “Exact to Me” gives way to a bridge
that’s dramatic in its contrast; the fuzz guitar of “Crossing
Line” becomes the thorny bed over which Sam Prekop rolls out
his breathy vocals. “Transparent” offers gently hypnotic melancholy
to drift the disc to a close.
—David
Greenberger
 Queens
of the Stone Age
Era
Vulgaris (interscope)
“This
one goes out to Queens of the Trust Fund. You slept on my
floor, now I’m sleeping through your motherfuckin’ records.”
I had to chuckle when the Dwarves sang this about Queens of
the Stone Age, because I was snoozing too. The Queens’ last
album, Lullabies to Paralyze, was a real sleeper by
Queens standards (intentionally or not). But don’t get me
wrong; I like Josh Homme. There is no question that the singer,
guitarist and all-around do-it-yourselfer is the linchpin
in the Queens’ formula. Nevertheless, I was worried when he
kicked bassist Nick Oliveri out of the band in 2004. Oliveri’s
bass work lent the band a backbone, and his singing gave the
band a swagger that Homme could sometimes cede to falsetto
crooning. Thankfully, on Era Vulgaris, Homme has reclaimed
the band’s cockiness, and ensured the album isn’t taken over
by one tone, by mixing in Brian Eno-style keyboard work, and
adding a helpful heaping of Queens’ most pleasing vocal talent,
Mark Lanegan. The most powerful tracks on the album, “Make
It Wit Chu” and “Into the Hollow,” feature Lanegan’s thick,
smoky vocal accents, along with soul-piercing slide guitar.
Other standouts feature lightning-fast rhythm work and a revved-up
Homme spitting vitriol that is both hysterical and sharp-witted,
like this, from “I’m Designer”: “You’ve made me an offer that
I can refuse (’course either way I get screwed)/Counterproposal:
I go home and jerk off!” Ironically, album-opener “Turnin’
on the Screw” is a classic rock kiss-off given a spine by
the absent Oliveri: “They say those who can’t just instruct
others/And act like victims and jilted lovers/You cant lose
it if you never had it/Disappear, man, do some magic/Want
a reason?/How’s about ‘Because?’/You ain’t a has-been if you
never was.” It took them an album, but the Queens of the Stone
Age have recovered from the loss of Oliveri and are sharper
than ever before.
—David
King
Erik Friedlander
Block
Ice & Propane (Skipstone)
Erik Friedlander’s Block Ice & Propane (due out
Aug. 14) is an album of solo cello. It’s not self-indulgent
or academic and it doesn’t sound like anything else. Friedlander
is the son of photographer Lee Friedlander, and he’s played
with downtown New York luminaries like Laurie Anderson and
John Zorn. An iconoclast, he treats the cello like a guitar.
“Block Ice” celebrates cross-country trips the Friedlander
family made in the ’60s. It boasts photos by Lee, a reminiscence
by Erik, cool cover art and 13 cuts spanning the propulsive
“King Rig,” the gnarly title tune and “Cold Chicken,” a jig.
Friedlander can play loud, then turn soft on a dime, and he’ll
bow the hell out of his instrument if the topic—big trucks,
Airstreams, road fatigue—calls for it. He puts me in mind
of Sandy Bull, the great plectrist who recorded for Vanguard
in the early ’60s, melding mantra and Memphis in bluegrass
ragas (Bull died of lung cancer in 2001, four years before
another great, and similarly singular, American guitarist,
Chris Whitley, died of the same illness). Block Ice and
Propane, like those family trips, goes where other albums
don’t. Friedlander, whose sense of drama pays proper homage
to silence, plays wonderful variations on an instrument—and
on America.
—Carlo
Wolff
|
Site
Search 
