Nick Cave/Grinderman
Nick Cave is five feet away from me, nearly on all fours, back arched, mimicking a wolf taking a piss. We're in a room in the comically posh, members-only Soho House in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, and Cave's animalistic outburst is apropos considering the subject at hand; Grinderman is the punk die hard's lewdest outlet. At 52, Cave's id is still raging, perhaps more than ever before.
Talking about the band's new album, Grinderman 2, Cave slouches into the hotel room's couch-- which he witheringly describes as "the color of a footballer's wife's skin"-- his shirt barely buttoned, his thinning hair a bit scraggly, his tan deep. The one-time pale crusader of darkness looks more like a Miami beach crawler. But his attitude is erudite and sneering. He's at points jokey, dismissive, arch, and heartfelt-- all while emitting the sort of untouchable frequencies one would expect to come out of one of punk's most enduring and uncompromising lifers.
Grinderman is his latest and most playful project, and the new record once again transposes Cave's corrupted themes of lust, god, and America through a screaming blues-rock blitz. While the band's hilarious single "No p***y Blues" may have led some to believe the project was a one-off goof, that is most definitely not the case. Grinderman gives Cave the opportunity to blow up his past-- something he's more than happy to do. I spoke with him and Grinderman (and Bad Seeds) drummer Jim Sclavunos about the new record, relevancy, and, um, hair gel:
The rest of the interview is at the link.
_________________
”Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." ~H. L. Mencken
@themorrigan1972
Subject: Nick Cave/Grinderman 
Mon Sep 20, 2010 11:44 am
