On the eve of the recent Australian election, MySpace held a poll asking voters which native singer they would most like to see running the country. Surprisingly, Nick Cave came in first, ahead of such national treasures as Kylie and Dame Edna Everage. That Cave could even place highly in this kind of frivolous mass-market jape, let alone win, is a sign of just how things have changed over the course of his 30-year career.
Chary of being pigeonholed, for years he fought against being cast as gloomy and heroin-fuelled, with songs seemingly as black as his clothes. But more recently, the 52-year-old Brighton resident has been keen to avoid another over-simplification, that of middle-aged respectability, especially now that he's enforcing a famously strict 9 to 5, five days a week work regime to crank out novels, film scripts and soundtracks as well as albums.
Cave has toyed with the idea that he might soon be over the hill via his own merchandise, which includes a cheeky twist on that classic symbol of domesticity, the tea towel – adorned with a simple gun motif to take one's mind off dish-drying tedium.
That Cave has never taken himself as seriously as people think is equally clear from Grinderman. Featuring several of his backing band the Bad Seeds, what began in 2006 as a looser, noisier release from the day job is now too good to be dismissed as a side project. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds exist largely to serve the boss's songwriting prowess but in Grinderman the tunes emerge during more free-form studio sessions, with the words polished afterwards.
The results have proved invigorating, the seedy blues-punk of the band's self-titled debut even partly resurrecting the lizard-brained persona Cave left behind in the early 80s following the collapse of the Bad Seeds' wayward predecessors, the Birthday Party. Addressing the notion of older musicians being chiefly concerned with the masculine midlife crisis, Grinderman's take on the fragility of the male psyche is best summarised by the first record's brilliant sleeve: a snapshot of a rather worried-looking monkey, paws cupped defensively around its genitals.
Grinderman 2 continues the animal theme; this time, the cover star is a lone wolf, let loose in a marble bathroom. Which suits the change in mood, the priapic desperation of the first album having been supplanted by ravenous malevolence. "Kitchenette" offers seduction with a side order of threat ("I'll stick my fingers in your biscuit jar and crush all your gingerbread men"), while even the rare quieter moments get out of hand. "Palaces of Montezuma" is a list of over-the-top romantic promises; its protagonist, having initially offered up a "custard-coloured super dream of Ali McGraw and Steve McQueen", can't help but try too hard and is soon plumping for "the spinal cord of JFK wrapped in Marilyn Monroe's negligee".
They've found their feet as a band too. No less confrontational, the sound is now more confident, less frantic, adding to the album's swaggering brilliance. The knock-on effect of the first Grinderman record was one of the very best Bad Seeds releases, 2008's Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! Same again, please.
