Grinderman

Grinderman | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 10, 2007)
• Original Release Date: 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: ANTI-
• ASIN: B000MX7YUE
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #47,927 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Grinderman is the sound of indie rock legends growing old disgracefully, and that is by no means a criticism. From the opening rant of "Get It On," this is an album with all the menace of an angry drunk, dripping with anger and testosterone (as the surfeit of facial hair in the band's interior photo will attest). It could even be the sound of Nick Cave's midlife crisis, but it doesn't matter, because Grinderman rocks. It's the sound of four musicians having a grand time, turning the volume up to 11 and really cutting loose. For that reason, it's the more upbeat tracks here that are probably the best: "Honey Bee (Let's Fly to Mars)" with its driving electric organ, the primal urgency of "Depth Charge Ethel," and the strutting album closer "Love Bomb." After all the po-faced seriousness he's displayed in recent years, it's good to know that Cave has rediscovered his sense of humour: "I cleaned the sheets on my bed, I combed the hairs across my head, I sucked in my gut and still she said, 'I don't want to,'" he sings on "No Pussy Blues," with his tongue firmly in cheek (amongst other places). Simply put, Grinderman is a hoot. --Ted Kord

Product Description

In April '10 Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos (collaborators in the legendary NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS) entered RAK studios, London, for a week with producer Nick Launay and recorded thirteen songs. Calling themselves GRINDERMAN, the resulting album has gone onto receive acclaim the world over as one of Cave's best albums.

See all Editorial Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't buy the import March 20, 2007

By D. Buckley

Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase

This import contains no extras for the additional cost, but DO BUY THE ALBUM!

Do you remember when Jesus and Mary Chain released their first album? When NIN released Downward Spiral? When you first heard From Her to Eternity?

This album is better than that.

Being a Nick Cave fan for years, I'm totally in shock and awe over how GREAT this album is. Sometimes musically reminiscent of Velvet Underground and original Stooges, with post industrial noise, and Nick Cave's dramatic poetic vocals, Grinderman creates a sound here that is intensely original and just mercilessly rocks.

Grinderman is the best album I'm going to hear this year.

It's just incredible that after all these years; Nick Cave had this album in him. It just rocks. If you can listen to Love Bomb without getting goose bumps, you're just not human.

If I have one criticism it's that I miss Blixa.

I never thought I'd hear music as cool as this created in 2007.

Play it loud.

37 of 41 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Liberate your invisibility April 14, 2007

By Morgan D. Wolf

Format:Audio CD

It's fascinating to hear a band address themes of aging and sexual longing in a youth-obsessed culture, in terms of the withering knowledge that sexual desire does not decrease as one reaches mid-life and beyond. The ability to fulfill that desire, at will, is another thing entirely.

The resulting, bewildered frustration is brilliantly captured in the Grinderman sound: it's the noise of longing, of sorrow, of powerlessness, of an animal shrieking for release from a cage with no gate. It's also about finding humor, passion, and self-effacing acceptance of all that life has to offer - of refusing to be crushed under the gravity of encroaching age and jaded experience. That would be too predictable.

To put this all in context --

In a recent interview with Salon.com (April 12, 2007), Nick Cave said that, as one gets older, one becomes more invisible, and therefore, more powerless, to impact the world. On some level, he was observing that the inevitability of social and physical death are demons we must confront as we turn the corner on our 40s and smack into the hard brick wall of 50. On the other side of that wall is liberation, i.e., the freedom to re-invent onself and to remake the rules of the game. To please oneself.

That's the lesson to be learned from Nick Cave and the Grinderman songs.

Give this record a serious listen. Please don't try and compare it to The Birthday Party sound. This music is immediate and unique. It is Nick Cave, as he is, now. It is meant for all of us, still-rocking, still-lusting, still wildly alive, `invisibles' -- as we are, now.

28 of 35 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Special Packaging? March 19, 2007

By B. Pardue

Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase

This product is listed as "Limited Edition Special Packaging" at a cost of $30.99. It's nothing but an ordinary CD in a plastic jewel case with a "Made In Hong Kong" sticker on the back. It's the import version. There's nothing "special" about the packaging. Save your money and get the domestic version for $14.

The album itself is awesome by the way. Nick Cave continues to make fantastic albums. Even though I feel ripped-off by Amazon's inaccurate advertising I must say this album is totally worth having. This is raw and noisy. It's removed from the introspective albums that Nick Cave has produced with the Bad Seeds recently but is better conceived than any Birthday Party record ever was. It's not The Bad Seeds. It's not The Birthday Party. It's GRINDERMAN!

To be fair, I asked Amazon to refund the price difference between this misleading product and the domestic version, the difference being about $17.. They agreed and I got my refund in no time. Thanks Amazon, great customer service.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't be fooled, buy the regular import or domestic July 3, 2007

By DJD

Format:Audio CD

First let me say that the music is fantastic. The first two of three singles are mean and filthy, bluesy rock tunes, kind of similar to The Birthday Party but not nearly as angry and post-punk. This is the modern version.

It's challenging to the ear at first because it is so different from anything else you might hear, but great albums are often like that. You expect them to sound a certain way because that is what you have been accustomed to hearing from an artist. You'd have to go at least back to, "Murder Ballads", which is absolutely TREMENDOUS by the way, or all the way back to "From Her To Eternity" and "The First Born Is Dead", both of which are GENIUS good, to hear something similar to Grinderman, but of course it is not with The Bad Seeds, so it doesn't sound as polished.

These are tracks that they threw together over a weekend in a studio, I believe, and then decided to clean them up A BIT and release them. Why not right, all the faithful will buy it and they will make a few bucks. BUT, it is worth buying because there is nothing else like it. DON'T expect it to be Nick Cave and TBS because it's Grinderman. It's different. It's NOT all grit and grim, however, there are a bunch of quieter, ballad type tunes as well. They just used the tough ones to spark interest. 4 stars!

Now, about AMAZON. This was listed as Limited Edition with Special packaging, which I just expected to be a cardboard jacket, but what arrived was not just the wrong CD, it wasn't the domestic MUTE release or the UK MUTE release, it was a pressing that was MADE IN CHINA. I pre-ordered the "Special Edition" as soon as it was available to pre-order and waited about six weeks to get a CD from China.... It took FOUR phone calls, which added up to many HOURS be on hold and talking, and SIX emails, but I finally did get a full refund and for some reason a second copy of the same record. What I found especially maddening about getting the refund is that the people on the other end of the line are not music collectors. They don't know what special packaging is, the warehouse did not pay attention to the fact that they were not sending out CDs in special packaging, which is bush league, and none of the four people I spoke with for hours on the phone knew what a bootleg CD from China was.

I know it's a little late for me to speak of this problem because they eventually figured out that they were stiffing their customers and issued refunds. They should have thrown in at least the real domestic copy or even the import, which is what we were ordering because come on, this is AMAZON. An enormous international corporation that takes in GOD knows how much revenue a quarter and satisfying a few hundred people is nothing to them. Keep in mind, this was LIMITED EDITION, so they couldn't have sold that many. They didn't even sell out. They did in England, but not in the US. OK, that's enough bashing. Amazon is GREAT 99% of the time, but they really dropped the ball on this one and it was inexcusable.

Boy, that felt good!

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