Grinderman at First Avenue
From his earliest days in the 1970s with Boys Next Door, and later The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds, Australia’s Nick Cave has always trafficked in a swampy, machismo-laden stew of sex and sleaze-ridden spirituality. Even at his most gothically elegant, that electric charge of sinfulness is at the core of his art, whether in his songwriting or novels like The Death Of Bunny Munro. You’re never sure whether he’s going to buy you a shot of bourbon, rob you at knifepoint, or lecture you sternly on how God is coming soon to destroy the world. That’s also a big part of the magnetically dangerous stage presence that makes Cave one of the quintessential rock ’n’ roll frontmen, which he proved with a powerful show at First Avenue last night, performing with his latest project, Grinderman.
A lean and mean side project rounded out by three Bad Seeds—bassist Martyn Casey, multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, and drummer Jim Sclavunos—Grinderman distills Cave’s rawest qualities into a potent, dynamite-like essence. The band’s squawky, Stooges-esque dirty blues leans far to the heavy side of Cave’s work, giving a meaty, palpably physical sound to the churning emotional turmoil that’s never far from the surface in any of his songs. Grinderman is less about Cave’s literary sensibilities than it is about hitting a raw nerve of emotion—usually, for instance, he meticulously crafts his lyrics alone in an office, but for Grinderman he improvised them with the band. And with Cave now in his 50s, Grinderman is as much a defiant rage against aging as a simple howl of virility, though there are plenty of those on single-entendre songs like “Worm Tamer” and “No Pussy Blues.” Surprising as it may have been to hear a Bad Seeds song (“O Children” ) pop up in the latest Harry Potter movie, a Grinderman song may have given some of the Deathly Hallows audience members heart attacks.
Grinderman’s live show is even further distilled than the band’s two studio efforts, titled simply Grinderman and Grinderman 2. There’s not much happening in the slow speeds; it’s fifth gear and full speed ahead or nothing. Cave set the tone for the evening right away with a ferocious version of “Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man,” the first track off Grinderman 2. It hit as loudly and powerfully as a jet engine, and there were few quiet moments until the band left the stage after 14 songs, a boiling cauldron of a set list culled entirely from the two Grinderman discs.
Cave, like a scarecrow televangelist or predatory stork, often stalked the front of the stage in front of the amps, sometimes singing directly to the people in the front row and even leaning out in a half-stagedive before nimbly jumping back and over the row of amps to throw down on the Korg keyboard. Dressed in an open-collared dark suit like some kind of lounge-lizard undertaker, Cave had an unforgettable stage presence, but Ellis stole the show several times himself. The big-bearded Ellis, who also leads moody instrumental trio Dirty Three, has collaborated with Cave on projects like the soundtrack for the film The Road and is the other major force in Grinderman’s sound. In the studio, Ellis builds up a driving intensity with loops and overdubs, which means that he’s got a lot to juggle for the band’s live show, even with a louder and more stripped-down approach. He played with the intensity of a biker-bar yogi, whether attacking his violin with a raggedy bow that he flailed like a whip, or bashing a standing cymbal with a pair of maracas. He was just as crazed and animated seated cross-legged on the ground, screaming the chorus of “Evil” into a mic set at waist height while manipulating a row of effects pedals with his hands.
In the opening slot, Iranian-Armenian performance artist and theremin player Armen Ra was a huge contrast to the raucousness that Grinderman brought later, but a decidedly entertaining one. Backed by orchestral string tracks straight out of the early-’60s lounge/exotica scene, Ra deftly coaxed eerie, ethereal versions of mid-century standards like “Ave Maria” and “Lara’s Theme” out of his theremin, a strange electronic instrument that creates sound via the manipulation of the electric field surrounding it, thus making it the only instrument that’s played without the musician actually touching it. Ra, who also performs as a drag artist, has a sense of style that embraces the flamboyant, but perhaps to keep from out-glamming the headliner, he went for understated elegance at First Avenue. Dapper in a slim-fitting black suit and white patent-leather shoes, Ra could have been some stranded time-traveler straight out of the age of Mad Men. It’s easy to imagine him as a guest on The Ed Sullivan Show in between the plate spinners and the jumping show dogs.
