PHENOMENA – Blind Faith

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The melodic rock fans among you who are over a certain age will no doubt remember Tom Galley’s Phenomena project. Phenomena featured a host of stars, creating impressive line-ups across three releases between 1984 and 1993. If I’m honest, I found the musicians involved more interesting than the songs actually featured on those albums, but even so, it’s hard not to be impressed by the idea behind it all.

While many of the Phenomena cast featured no introduction (Glenn Hughes, Cozy Powell and Mel Galley being heavily featured; even Queen’s Brian May found time to contribute), the project also gave increased exposure to a few lesser known performers, including Max Bacon (mostly associated with his appearance as vocalist on the Steve Hackett/Steve Howe vehicle GTR) and Keith Murrell of Airrace (a band still best known for featuring Jason Bonham on drums).

In 2006, some thirteen years after that third instalment, Tom Galley revived the Phenomena project. The resulting album, ‘Psychofantasy’, featured contributions from Glenn Hughes and Keith Murrell once again, alongside Tony Martin, best known for his stint as Black Sabbath’s frontman between 1987-1995. As with the first three Phenomena releases, Tom’s brother Mel Galley was one of the featured guitarists on all tracks, providing the Phenomena project with continuity, despite the long gap between releases.

Four years on and with a lyrical theme of good against evil, ‘Blind Faith’ is the fifth instalment in the Phenomena story. It is the first Phenomena release not to feature Tom Galley’s brother Mel, who sadly died in 2008, although his presence is still here in the form of two co-written numbers.

‘The Sky Is Falling’ begins the musical journey with a heavy yet melodic offering, pairing Riot/Masterplan vocalist Mike DeMeo with Vindictiv/Firecracker guitarist Stefan Lindholm. To many, being the second man to fill the position of Masterplan vocalist, DeMeo is “that guy who isn’t Jorn Lande”, but to his credit, he has a great voice. A quiet intro leads into a classic rock arrangement with slow pounding drums. DeMeo’s slightly raspy delivery sits well against the backing vocals on the chorus, while his big vocal style is well suited to the piece as a whole. Interestingly, for all of its huge rock leanings, there isn’t a featured guitar solo, leaving Stefan Lindstrom with a rather lesser role.

You’d think since the title track features the vocalist and guitarist from Saga, the performance would have ended up with a bit of a proggy slant, but Tom Galley’s song-writing style is so deeply rooted in an old classic rock vein, there’s nothing really prog happening here. However, a Celtic jig creeping in between vocal sections adds an element of surprise. Rob Moratti’s vocal is effortless while Ian Crichton’s guitar work adopts a slighty dirty tone, heavy on the bottom-end, occasionally reminiscent of some of his work on ‘Ghettos By Design’ (Crichton’s largely ignored solo release from 1997). His featured guitar solo, although short, features his typical flashiness. Moratti makes a second vocal appearance on the huge ballad ‘House of Love’. Here, his delivery is horribly squealy and, if I’m completely honest, slightly painful, as he over-sings most of his lines to the extreme. Luckily, FM guitarist Jim Kirkpatrick and Salute guitarist Martin Kronlund are on hand with a decent set of guitar chops – the solo in particular is more than commendable, although never resorts to showiness.

‘Fighting’ is also noticeably weak. Its hammering riff at first gives the impression it might be exciting. With a strong old-influence somewhere between Saxon’s debut, very early 80s Gillan and a dash of Scorpions (albeit heavier than all of those), it has more than enough presence, but it’s repetitive nature makes the track feel overlong and the chorus is far too simplistic. In the hands of a classic vocalist it might just scrape by as decent filler, but sadly the heavily accented vocal of Primal Fear’s Ralf Scheepers just weighs the track down further.

‘Liar’ opens with a slab of keyboards which set the tone for a track featuring Stefan Lindstrom’s bombastic guitar stylings (marking his second performance here). Ex-Black Sabbath vocalist Tony Martin’s vocals are equally bombastic in places, though it’s likely his performance will be overshadowed by some of the other vocalists here. He deserved a chorus better than “Liar!” (repeat as often as necessary), but despite this, Tony makes the best of his number with a strong performance during the verses.

Contender for best track, ‘It’s Over (I Was Gonna Tell You Tonight)’ is a fantastic fist-in-the-air piece of AOR with Robin Beck (still best known in the UK for her number one hit ‘First Time’) at the helm. This is an equal match for most of the material from her classic ‘Trouble Or Nothin’ album from ’89 and her slightly husky vocal is a perfect match for Jim Kilparick and Martin Kronlund’s guitar work – in places clean and ringing in tone, in others hard and choppy (although the sleeve notes don’t give any specific details regarding the two differing styles, I’m almost certain that Kronlund is responsible for the edgier stuff, leaving Kilpatric to the clean, more refined playing). This gem is a four minute reminder of why you still like melodic rock and probably have done since the eighties…and in some cases, long before.

‘Angels Don’t Cry’ is much heavier. After a brief atmospheric intro, a chunky riff provides the base for Mikael Erlandsson (Salute/Last Autumn’s Dream) to deliver some horrible lyrics about child abuse. After a couple of minutes of the sledgehammer riffing and Erlandsson’s Euro-styled metal vocal, you’ll wish Robin Beck had been allowed more time in the spotlight! It’s not all bad, though, since a well-arranged backing vocal provides a lighter touch on the chorus – such a pity that chorus is another of Tom Galley and Tom Brown’s (almost) one-liners.

‘If You Love Her’ begins with a slow and brooding riff manages to be both heavy and melodic. Guitarist Tommy Denander’s work here is simple and direct and Chris Ousey (of Heartland and Virginia Wolf fame) is in fine voice. His strong lead provides this number with a key feature as his powerful lead vocals act as call-and-response with a simple harmony vocal. Tommy Denander gives Ousey a far heavier base to work from compared with the vocalist’s previous work, but Ousey more than steps up to the challenge here.

Aside from a few tracks from early albums ‘Indiscreet’ and ‘Tough It Out’, I’ve never been a great lover of Brit-AOR band FM. However, their vocalist Steve Overland takes lead on ‘Don’t Ever Give Your Heart Away’ – and it’s a track which is good enough to stand alongside Robin Beck’s performance. This is largely because I’m fond of very traditional sounding melodic rock and – like the Robin Beck number – this features none of the Euro-bombast which has a great presence on this disc. Also more traditional, Terry Brock’s performance is another winner. It may not have Mike Slamer’s golden touch, but ‘One More Chance’ could sit alongside some of the material on his ‘Diamond Blue’ solo album. With a musical arrangement which is faster than mid-pace, though never reaches the heights of pure rocker, Terry turns in a great vocal on a number which boasts one of this album’s strongest choruses. Steve Newman is this tracks featured guitarist and here, he offers great support in a classic, clean-toned style.

Given my indifference to Phenomena’s original three releases, I didn’t approach ‘Blind Faith’ with too much excitement. You know how it is with supergroups and all-star projects, they rarely live up to expectations. As for ‘Blind Faith’ – it could have been better, for sure, but the good bits far outweigh the bad. it’s worth checking out for Robin Beck alone. …But factor in the other decent vocal performances from Terry Brock, Chris Ousey and Steve Overland and it definitely becomes worth forty minutes of your listening time, despite two or three really bad moments. It’s just a great shame that Mel Galley isn’t around to hear the completed picture.

September 2010

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MANIC STREET PREACHERS – Postcards From A Young Man

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When the fourth Manic Street Preachers album, ‘Everything Must Go’ came out in 1996, it marked a turning point for the band. The first album recorded without lyricist Richey James Edwards (although a chunk of the albums lyrics came from notebooks he left prior to his 1995 disappearance), the album brought the Manics a far bigger audience, courtesy of the huge hit single ‘A Design For Life’. When its follow-up, ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’ was released in 1998, I hated it. Although they were a great rock band, this style “Manic Street Preachers with a safety net” weren’t the same. They just weren’t. From then, I kept my distance from the band, proclaiming (to the tune of their then recent hit, ‘If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next’) “If he tolerates this, then old Richey must be dead”.

Almost a decade later, while in my local branch of Fopp, I heard the Manics’ 2007 album ‘Send Away The Tigers’. While not as edgy as the Manics at their ferocious best, something seemed to be an improvement. I still couldn’t tell you what, though. Maybe it showed the “poppy” Manics in a better light then the previous post-Richey records, or just maybe I’d finally accepted there wouldn’t be another ‘Holy Bible’ ever again. I bought the album and really enjoyed it, and continue to do so (I also went back and bought the couple of albums I’d avoided, to find they really weren’t all that bad; they were just a bit too safe). Then, in 2009, using more of Richey’s notebook scribblings, the Manics released ‘Journal For Plague Lovers’ – an angry collection of songs produced by Steve Albini – which was arguably their best album for some years. It was exciting to hear James Dean Bradfield yelping out previously unheard lyrics written by Richey. It was a sharp kick; proof that the band could still cut it – and a reminder why I loved the Manics in the early 90s, and why I still tell people I’m a fan, despite my criticism of huge chunks of their back-cat.

With two decent albums under their belts following nearly a decade of disappointment, my expectations were fairly high for ‘Postcards For a Young Man’. Those expectations for more anger a la ‘Plague Lovers’ were kicked to the kerb fairly swiftly, after hearing the choir of vocals slapped across the opening track. In a reaction to the harshness and old-school Manics approach its immediate predecessor, ‘Postcards’ is it’s polar opposite, much in the same way ‘The Holy Bible’ had been followed with the hugely commercial ‘Everything Must Go’. Released as a single, that opening track, ‘(It’s Not War) It’s Just the End of Love’ features a decent chorus and vocal arrangement from James Dean Bradfield. The ringing guitar on the verses coupled with Sean Moore’s good time-keeping during the verses ranks it among the better, post-96, softer-edged Manics material. If anything, it would have sounded better without the strings…but it’s a track which gets better with every play.

The title track appears to be an attempt at re-creating something anthemic; something in the vein of ‘A Design For Life’. It’s partly successful and the piano part is pleasing, but as the track draws to a close, there’s just a little too much going on and I’m reminded of the choir of vocals at the end of Queen’s ‘Somebody To Love’. A brave attempt – and it’s easy to see what the band were going for here, but sadly, for all of its potential, it sounds like a composite of a couple of older Manics songs (with a heavy influence from ‘A Design For Life’) and comes off worse for that. The only track with lyrics written by Bradfield, ‘I Think I’ve Found It’ is a quirky pop/rock workout, driven by mandolin. Matching a decent guitar riff under-pinned by Hammond organ, this is sunny and upbeat – and interestingly, one of the only tracks which doesn’t feel like its commercial edge was forced. Maybe Nicky Wire ought to leave more of the song writing duties to his creative counterpart…

‘A Billion Balconies Facing The Sun’ is rockier than at least half of the album – not edgy especially, but in keeping with the slightly punchier end of the commercial styled Manics. James Dean Bradfield’s guitar solos are spiky (and not always completely in tune), Sean Moore’s drumming is solid and – guesting on bass – ex-Guns N’ Roses man Duff McKagan does a great job of holding everything together. It’s not a particularly distinctive bass line and I’m sure Nicky Wire could have played it just as easily. I’m pretty sure that around the time of their second album ‘Gold Against The Soul’ the Manics had expressed a liking of G N’ R, so, with that in mind, the fact that Duff stepped in to help is cool. With an intro which sounds like a badly played Rolling Stones riff, ‘The Future Has Been Here 4 Ever’ is one of those tracks your skip button was invented for. Nicky Wire steps up for a lead vocal – an extremely flat one at that – while drummer Sean Moore contributes some equally tuneless trumpet work. It would have been bad enough, but once the choir chimes in, their harmony work only serves to make Wire sound even worse.

Drenched in strings and a guitar which sounds multi-tracked, ‘Hazelton Avenue’ is by far the best of the lighter material here. Bradfield’s performance is one of the album’s best, during a song which sounds instantly familiar. The mid-section features strings playing an eastern motif, though it’s no more than a fleeting moment, as if it were an afterthought. ‘Some Kind of Nothingness’ would have fallen into the category of nothingness, but is saved somewhat by the presence of Echo & The Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch, who shares lead vocal. McCulloch’s Scouse-tinged lower register is a good contrast to Bradfield’s higher belting voice, and the end result is decent, even if not as striking as Bradfield’s duet with Nina Persson on the Manics’ 2007 hit, ‘Your Love Alone Is Not Enough’. Sadly, although the appearance of McCulloch provides plenty of interest, the choir on the chorus is just too heavy handed and kills the song. I appreciate the Manics are attempting to grab your attention with the lavish production, strings and choirs, but sometimes less is more, y’know?

‘Auto-Intoxication’ features another guest performer – this time fellow Welshman and legend John Cale – whom, you have to wonder why, isn’t in the producer’s chair – and whose contribution here is limited to a few keyboards and some electronic noise. Like Duff McKagan’s guest spot, it’s an unassuming role which blends in well. Since John Cale was happy enough to lend his skills, it’s such a shame the band didn’t give him more to do. With or without Cale, the track is a decent rock number, with slightly more edge than a lot of ‘Postcards From a Young Man’. There are echoes of old style Manics here and there, especially as Bradfield hits the shoutier end of his performance, but it’s still more in keeping with the noisier moments of ‘Send Away The Tigers’ than anything from ‘Journal For Plague Lovers’.

‘Postcards From a Young Man’ is a mostly slick, well put together album which, from so many other “alternative” bands may have been a minor masterpiece. For the Manics, it’s a deliberate attempt at creating an album with huge appeal beyond their fan base, with both Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield claiming it “one last shot at mass communication”. Listening to the overly-shined safe rock music on the album, with the help of producer Dave Eringa they’ve certainly created something very commercial, but it’s a far cry from the Manics most edgy works.

If you were a late convert and were attracted to the band via songs like ‘You Stole The Sun From My Heart’ then this album is for you. If you’re an old-school fan who wants to be challenged by provacative slogan-style lyrics, there’s not too much for you here. Okay, so some of the songs have a bit of social commentary at their roots (for example, ‘Golden Platitudes’ regards Labour’s empty promises and their subsequent downfall and ‘All We Make Is Entertainment’ concerns itself with the selling off of Cadbury’s and Britain’s decline), but as expected, none of Nicky Wire’s lyrics have the same venomous bite as anything Richey Edwards left behind (and anything with any real edge is ultimately washed out by the aforementioned choirs and strings anyway).

‘Postcards From a Young Man’ is an album destined get played once in a while and enjoyed for the well-crafted rock record it ultimately is…but once it’s over, some of you will still find yourselves reaching for ‘Generation Terrorists’, ‘The Holy Bible’ and ‘Journal For Plague Lovers’. Still, it’s the push and pull between chorus driven accessible material and angry sloganeering that have kept this band so vibrant over so long a period. Not bad for a bunch of guys who originally set out to release one album and disappear into the ether…

September 2010

STATE COWS – State Cows

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In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Westcoast AOR scene produced some brilliant bands and musicians. While Steely Dan and Toto are probably its most famous associates, there are many albums released by lesser known artists which have remained close to the hearts of AOR fans. Airplay’s self-titled disc (a collaboration between Jay Graydon and David Foster) and the sole album by Maxus (a short-lived band featuring Robbie Buchanan and legendary session guitarist Michael Landau) are among the first which spring to mind when listening to this self-titled album by Swedish band State Cows (an anagram of Westcoast, if you hadn’t noticed!).

Strange as it may seem, Daniel Andersson and Stefan Olofsson (the core of State Cows) have replicated the sound of 1980 in summertime Los Angeles almost perfectly, despite hailing from Umeå in the north of Sweden. Everything you’ve ever loved about Westcoast AOR is here; so much so that, when listening to it, it seems almost impossible that this album was released in 2010.

‘New York Town’ features a great arrangement with the bass high in the mix, wonderful stabbing piano and a tasteful horn accompaniment (thankfully provided by real brass). There are hints of so much great Westcoast smoothness here – late seventies Doobie Brothers and Airplay spring to mind. One of the band’s great heroes, Mr Jay Graydon – a guitarist almost synonymous with the Westcoast scene – even guests on guitar. If you have any doubts about how authentic this album sounds, Graydon’s seal of approval should sweep them away. The easy pop-rock of ‘Come To The Point’ features some tasteful electric piano, jazzy guitar and a vocal which would be well suited to Richard Page (of 3rd Matinee, Pages and Mr Mister fame). Again, with hints of Richard Page, thanks to a keyboard on the verses sounding rather like 3rd Matinee’s ‘Holiday For Sweet Louise’, ‘Painting a Picture’ features another and a strong vocal, combined with clean toned rhythm guitar breaks and sublime electric piano work. Although not as immediate as some of the album’s tracks, State Cows make what they do sound so effortless.

During ‘Mystery Jane’ the horn section becomes a strong feature, while some stabbing keys add a lot of weight. The humour in this tale of a bar meeting may be somewhat silly, but musically, it’s provides another great example of the band’s spot-on musicianship. ‘Riding Down This Highway’ showcases the softest side of State Cows’ music and while the lead and harmony vocals are meticulously arranged, the great moments here are provided by Daniel Andersson’s slightly jazzy guitar leads. ‘I’ve Changed’ combines smooth Westcoast vocals with solid bass work, twin lead harmony guitars and upfront keyboards. The closing keyboard solo mightn’t agree with everyone though,since it combines the squealy tone favoured by Steve Winwood in the eighties with the excesses of seventies pomp! One again, it’s bound to appeal to fans of Maxus, Airplay and early Toto. If you want a track which combines all of State Cows’ best traits most effectively, this is a fantastic example of their signature sound.

An over enthusiastic horn intro begins ‘Tunisian Nights’, the song settles into an easy groove with elements of early Toto and Donald Fagen. The horns creep back in on the chorus (this track being the only one where the brass feels perhaps a little heavy handed), but despite their attempts to be the most attention grabbing, it’s the electric piano and a well-crafted vocal on the chorus which provides the strongest elements. The guitar riff which creeps in every so often is also notable, since aside from the odd solo, the guitar doesn’t make a huge impact in the band’s often keyboard-heavy music. ‘Lost In a Mind Game’ is dominated by a jazzy shuffle and muted horns, straight out of the Steely Dan songbook. The drum part is meticulously played and the vocal harmonies are spot on. It may lack Steely Dan’s dry sneer, but all the other elements are so close. Göran Tuborn’s guitar work is fantastic and when combined with the rest of the tight musicianship on show, it makes perfect sense that some of these guys had previously performed as part of a Steely Dan covers band.

What really comes across with this album is just how much love both Stefan and Daniel have for the Westcoast classics. This sounds authentic enough to stand alongside not only the aforementioned Airplay and Maxus, but also Bill Champlin’s ‘Runaway’ and Marc Jordan’s early masterpieces. If your stereo still gets graced by any of the artists mentioned here, then State Cows should be essential listening.

September 2010

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ORANJULY – Oranjuly

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Fronted by song writer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Brian E King, Oranjuly’s brand of power pop is one which instantly sounds familiar. Packaged in a sleeve which looks like a Fuzzy Felts recreation of a 1970s kitchen, Oranjuly’s debut album’s influences may all be pieces from a musical past, but like so much great power pop, the end result is timeless – and thanks to great song writing, the album is one which stands up to repeated listening and gets better with every play.

After a gentle intro, the opening rock chords of ‘Her Camera’ would suggest that this debut is noisier than it turns out to be, with its wall of guitars (using a tone which very much recalls ‘Flagpole Sitta’ by Harvey Danger) but this soon falls aside, making way for stabbing keyboards, dreamy vocals and bass/drum parts which cheekily give to the nod to The Beach Boys, specifically ‘God Only Knows’. The Brian Wilson fixation becomes more obvious during a really tight vocal interlude. Keen to grab your attention, the second half of the song manages to combine all of these elements, which creates something a little hard to take in at first, but it works well as a whole. They swiftly follow this with ‘Mrs. G’, which is much more user-friendly. Again, there are lavish harmonies and a bit of a kitchen-sink approach to the arranging, but the stabbing keyboards and bittersweet Ben Folds-esque lyric should be enough to win you over.

‘Personal Ads’ marks a return to a more guitar driven style rock/pop. The verses are full of vocal harmonies overlaid with twinkling keyboard noises, but it’s the simple hook on its noisier chorus which is bound to stick in your head. Let’s just say someone here is a fan of Weezer! My personal preferences lean towards the album’s softer 10cc and Badfinger styled material, but this is still hugely enjoyable. If you’re also someone who favours the seventies style of power pop, ‘South Carolina’ will please you with its McCartney/Wings inspired rumpty-tumpty rhythms. After an acoustic beginning and gentle vocal, a Ringo-esque drum fill leads the band in, including a bass line which, to begin with, sounds equally simple. As the song progresses, the bass line features a couple of great fills and the mid-section features an effective tack piano. The McCartney-isms here would have no doubt pleased the Jellyfish chaps too – though undoubtledly, they would have struggled to keep the arrangement so straightforward…

‘I Could Break Your Heart’ features one of the album’s best arrangements. The chorus here is pure bubblegum goodness, with a slightly sixties vibe reminiscent of Mark Bacino. Again, you’ll find harmony vocals in abundance, but one of its best features is a brief Matthew Sweet style guitar solo, which makes top use of multi-tracked guitars. ‘The Coldest Summer’ has verses which utilise some rather melancholy harmonies – again evoking so much great seventies pop – which musically, is incredibly strong, with flourishes of slide guitar, bell noises and handclaps. Throw in some subtle electric piano and twin guitar harmonies and – clocking in just shy of three minutes – you have a masterpiece. While most power pop provides a soundtrack for summer days, there’s always something mesmerizing about those moments tinged with sadness, especially when they are so well crafted.

Despite its title, ‘Hiroshige’s Japan’ has a very wistful English psych-pop quality. This harpsichord and brass number could have been from 1968. While it has rhythmic similarities to The Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’, the focus on harpsichord makes it hard not to think about the deeply sad ‘A Rose For Emily’, from The Zombies classic ‘Odessey and Oracle’. While the harpsichord is the featured instrument here, additional trumpet work adds some great atmosphere.

Like Jellyfish before them, these guys have a gift for arranging that, when done well, is always a pleasure for the listener. …And while Oranjuly wear each of their influences on their collective sleeves, this self-titled album is none the worse for it. With ten songs and no duds, this debut ranks alongside Owsley’s self-titled disc in terms of great power pop debuts. You owe it to yourselves to check it out.

September 2010

 

GRINDERMAN – Grinderman 2

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After the release of his 1996 album ‘Murder Ballads’, the almost unthinkable happened to Nick Cave. The one-time wild frontman of confrontational Aussie goth-punks The Birthday Party had become a well respected performer and songwriter and, no doubt thanks to an unlikely duet with Kylie Minogue, a household name. With his post-Birthday Party band The Bad Seeds, Cave had often created albums full of dark storytelling and sometimes macabre beauty, but ‘Murder Ballads’ propelled Cave’s career into heights that few thought his extreme approach to song writing would ever take him. From that point on, every Bad Seeds album has been a gem; each one containing a combination of beautiful melancholy and multi-layered adult rock which is almost unique.

In 2006, looking to write the follow up to The Bad Seeds double set ‘Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus’, Cave began jamming with a few of his Bad Seeds bandmates. With Cave taking up guitar as opposed to his usual piano, the results were edgy, a little unhinged and possibly showed the most aggression since Cave’s Birthday Party days. They decided that the improvised, grinding jams just weren’t right for The Bad Seeds, yet the results were too exciting to leave behind. And so, Grinderman was born. Their 2007 self-titled album was thrilling, if slightly unsettling. With themes of sexuality abound, the album was the sound of a mid-life crisis (most notably on the second single ‘No Pussy Blues’), with Grinderman’s guttural instincts and sometimes simplistic approach exciting fans and the press alike. Grinderman, in a sense, was a release of tension and anger for Cave and his cohorts, since, for some time, the Bad Seeds albums had become increasingly lavish affairs. In some ways, Grinderman typified a one-shot deal – one album and back to the next award winning Bad Seeds project. Indeed, after touring the Grinderman album, Cave, drummer Jim Sclavunos, bassist Martyn P Casey and multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis returned to the relative safety of their beloved Bad Seeds and created ‘Dig, Lazarus, Dig!’, which critics claimed was one of the finest albums of their career. In the summer of 2010, Grinderman returned.

Their second album, ‘Grinderman 2’, may have been created with a similar jamming-in-the-studio vibe, with no material pre-written before their arrival, but this time around, there’s far less of a ramshackle approach. More blues grooves, fewer garage rock assaults. This is probably because Cave and co approach Grinderman’s second outing with a pre-conceived idea of what Grinderman is, but possibly because attempting to out-do that first album would surely have been a mistake. At just under three minutes, ‘Evil’ re-visits the anger of the first Grinderman disc. Amid Sclavunos’s pounding drums and the repeated backing vocal shout of “evil…evil rising”, Cave delivers his stream-of-consciousness lyrical concerns with an intensity rarely heard since his Birthday Party days. As he belts out lines like ‘Who needs a record player? YOU ARE MY RECORD PLAYER!’, as a listener you become aware that when their most extreme, Grinderman could implode at any second; although unlike the previous Grinderman release, the intensity and anger is balanced out by a greater use of humour. That humour is often dry (as evidenced throughout most of Cave’s career) but also occasionally base and childish. Loaded with thinly veiled penis references, and undoubtedly ‘Grinderman 2’s answer to ‘No Pussy Blues’, ‘Worm Tamer’ is a shuffling number which presents itself like an ugly, learing cousin of Bo Diddley’s ‘Who Do You Love?’. This is then given intensity by Cave adopting his signature sneer, but the real Grinderman signature quality comes from the distorted bursts of noise, which could come from Cave’s angular guitar work, but are just as likely to have been created by Warren Ellis skulking somewhere, mistreating his electric bouzouki. While penis references are childish, you’ve got to smile when Cave delivers the line: “My baby calls me the Loch Ness monster…two great big humps and then I’m gone”. As with the first Grinderman disc, the themes of sexuality and lust figure highly on the radar, although usually with a tongue-in-cheek sneer.

‘Kitchenette’ features another blatant example of Cave’s humour, as he tries to win over a woman by reminding her that her husband leaves his false teeth and glass eye out and the best thing he’s ever given her is “Oprah Winfrey on a plasma screen”. Kitchenette is lucky to feature some of the album’s funniest lyrics, and when coupled with a bluesy drone, it’s a great example of Grinderman’s power to amuse and threaten in almost equal measure. ‘Mickey Mouse and The Goodbye Man’ is one of Martyn Casey’s greatest musical moment. During the verses, his simple, circular bass line is upfront with only gentle drum accompaniment and Cave’s dark vocal for company. As the verse pulls to a close, Cave hammers out distorted garage riffs on his guitar, given extra brilliance by the addition of ugly soloing with a fuzz-pedal. During the noisy parts, Grinderman are at full pelt, with their distorted brand of garage-blues an unstoppable force (given extra animalistic qualities by Cave’s higher notes resembling howling), but even so, the band are so much tighter than they had been on their debut.

The album’s first single ‘Heathen Child’ is classic. Shaking tambourines, punctuated by distorted guitar squalls provide a decent musical base, Cave’s lyrics name-check various gods, but just as interestingly, the abominable snowman appears for the second time on the album. This lends some weight to the band’s claim that the album’s songs are interlinked in some way (though with regard to revealing any details, they remain tight-lipped). Echoes of the noisy garage-blues duo The Black Keys can be heard throughout, but the track’s most striking feature are the distorted notes at the end – likely made by Ellis on his electric bouzouki. ‘What I Know’ has a spooky emptiness with Cave’s voice featured against some bells and scraping noises (undoubtedly the work of Ellis). It aims for spookiness in its starkness, but there’s so little happening, it ends up sounding lost amid the more interesting material.

With Cave accompanied by backing vocal oohs, and an altogether more lavish musical arrangement, ‘The Palace of Montezuma’ is somewhat surprising for Grinderman. The walls of guitar replaced by acoustic work, this could have been a Bad Seeds number. In terms of completeness and user-friendliness it’s one of the album’s best songs, but there’s something distinctly un-Grinderman about it. Until, that is, you look closer at its lyrical content. Whereby romance in the Bad Seeds’ universe may involve Cave crooning (and sometimes in a very traditional manner), here he attempts to prove his loyalty by offering a whole world of romantic promises – name-checking Ali McGraw and Steve McQueen on the way, the ridiculousness in the scenario arguably hitting its peak when he offers the woman in question “JFK’s spinal column, wrapped in Marilyn Monroe’s negligee”. In fact, although it’s never as obvious as it is during ‘Montezuma’, ‘Grinderman 2’ owes more to The Bad Seeds than their debut, partly through bits of it feeling less intense on the surface, but mostly due to its feeling like a complete work. Once again, though, most of the lyrics are far less poetic than any post-94 Bad Seeds work; but for Cave to release all of his musical demons, like a devil on The Bad Seeds’ shoulder, Grinderman needs to exist. As he says himself “…we wanted to get back to something with a really malign feel to it”. And if that malign streak means the release of albums as good as this, the world could be a better place for that.

September 2010