A Few Bad Seeds Spawn a New Sound

Nick Cave’s music is getting interesting again. For more than 20 years, the Australian has been singing dark ballads about murder and love with his band the Bad Seeds. Having reached a near perfection of this style on recent albums, notably 2001’s “No More Shall We Part” and 2004’s “Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus,” Mr. Cave’s new project, Grinderman, is intent to channel the rowdiness of a younger self and make a departure from his well-worn creative process. At the same time, he’s announced a new musical direction for his next album with the Bad Seeds. So we should believe him when he states at the beginning of this album, “I’ve got to get up to get down and start all over again.”Grinderman is not Mr. Cave’s best music, but it is the start of something new for him, a step back from the piano he’s played for more than a decade. It can be said that even Mr. Cave’s finest solo work has rarely achieved the intensity of innovation and provocation of his early output as a member of the Australian gothic-punk band Birthday Party, which existed briefly in the early 1980s. For those familiar with Birthday Party, it will be difficult to listen to Grinderman and not think of Mr. Cave’s violent and threatening vocal presence on those early albums.For fans of the Bad Seeds, it will be difficult to separate this album from the band’s previous catalog — if only in terms of personnel. Indeed, this is not a solo album — three of the Bad Seeds join Mr. Cave in Grinderman, though this time around they do so not just to perform but to create. Mr. Cave, who has always written the Bad Seeds’ material by himself, decided to try a new approach by teaming up with band members Martyn Casey (bass), Warren Ellis (violin and guitar), and Jim Sclavunos (drums) and writing songs as a group.Mr. Cave begins the first track, “Get It On,” by declaring, “Head on down to the basement and shout / Kick those white mice and black dogs out / kick those white mice and baboons out / kick those baboons and other motherf—–rs out.” If he can’t quite replicate the snarl of his youth, he at least intends to imitate its personality. The attack of a fuzzed out guitar onslaught that doesn’t let up for the rest of the track, coupled with Mr. Cave singing as severely as his aged voice can manage. “He drank panther piss and probably f—– the girls you’re married to / He’s got some words of wisdom … get it on” seals the punk affect. Vocally talented as he is, Mr. Cave is most impressive not as a brooding melancholic but as a madman with a gift for colorful blaspheme.Taken as a whole, the short album varies between combinations of punk, rockabilly, blues, and balladry, with frequent success. “No Pussy Blues” is about as humorous a rock star confessional parody as you’ll ever hear. It opens to the cadenced taps of a typewriter, as if to mock Mr. Cave’s own ambitions as a writer (he’s published a novel and a volume of his song lyrics, among other things), before a high-hat tap replaces that sound and Mr. Cave tells us, “My face is finished / my body’s gone / and I can’t help but think standing up here in all this applause / and gazing down at the young and the beautiful / that I must above all things love myself.” But no sooner has he repeated this last line then he offers the story of an unsuccessful effort to woo a girl he sees in the crowd: “I changed the sheets in my bed / I combed the hairs across my head / I sucked in my gut and still she said that she just didn’t want to.”But Mr. Cave, who has struggled with addiction over the years, confirms here his incurable addiction to balladry. By the third song, “Electric Alice,” he’s singing such lines as “in the pale moonlight” and “in the silver rain” to distorted guitars and violins. The result isn’t bad, just run of the mill Cave at this point. The same can be said for the title track, which recycles the same hackneyed lines as “Electric Alice.” Other tracks, such as “Go Tell the Woman” and “I Don’t Need You,” are good, short pieces that exalt in successful forays in different genres of song.If this playful outing from a seasoned voice is any indication of what’s to come, we can hope Mr. Cave’s return to the piano bench on his next album with the Bad Seeds will be as interesting as anything he’s done in a decade.

A Few Bad Seeds Spawn a New Sound

A Few Bad Seeds Spawn a New Sound

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