Tonight sees, what is still to some a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds side-project, Grinderman visit Glasgow for the first time and this early into the tour they are in a rousing mood.
Promoting second album Grinderman 2 Cave and co have managed to distance themselves from the Bad Seeds material by coming at it from a different angle.
Cave’s usual avenues of song writing have been cut off, no love or religion under this alter ego! The result is a much more raw, raunchy rock ‘n’ roll sound, far removed from his heavily ballad ridden Bad Seeds work.
Grinderman has gradually moved away from being just a side project since the release of their self-titled debut in 2007. This is further emphasised by the easily sold out crowd at the Barrowlands tonight, a bigger venue than the Bad Seeds played on their last visit to Glasgow.
Opener tonight ‘Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man’ sees the four-piece start in an explosive fashion before pushing into the Cave speciality explicit charms of ‘Worm Tamer’.
A quick breather is given to the band when Bad Seeds stalwart Warren Ellis blows his amp, prompting Cave to input “Warren’s blown up his third amp of the tour”, which is incidentally only four days old.
The mere mention of Ellis’ name provokes the crowd into a spell of Warren worship. A number of adoring fans in the audience proclaim their love for the bearded multi-instrumentalist, to which Ellis quips “I’m looking for a good divorce lawyer”.
The oozing sexuality of Grinderman is no better shown than in the stand out tracks from their debut album. It is these songs also that prove the set stand outs, ‘Get It On’ and ‘ No Pussy Blues’ convey opposite sides of Cave’s sex driven lyrical world, but both rouse the crowd into massive sweaty sing-a-longs.
‘Man in the Moon’, ‘When My Love Comes Down’ and their self-titled track create a strong and dazing yet moving encore. The complaint anyone could have is the lack of Bad Seeds tracks making appearance, however this does not seem to bother most in attendance, further justifying the testament that Grinderman is a stand alone band in their own right.
Grinderman 2 is out now on Anti-.
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