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It was nearly 30 years ago when a tall, skinny former Anglican choirboy from Melbourne became Nick Cave, scary frontman of the Birthday Party.
So began a career which often risked him not making his next one.
But over the years Cave became one of rock's more remarkable
figures - a kind of Iggy Allan Poe. And this year, after two decades-plus of leading various Bad Seeds line-ups, Cave heads towards his 50th anniversary while in a creative purple patch.
His 2004 epic double album Abattoir Blues/ The Lyre of Orpheus quite rightly made many a best-of-year list. Last year, so did The Proposition, the Australian western he scripted and scored. Now, it seems, it's time for fun before the "Cave at 50" features start running.
Grinderman the band is a guitar-toting Cave fronting a mini-Seeds line-up of Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos.
Grinderman the album is an 11-track, largely thrilling, frequently frenetic fuzzbomb, one of infectiously spontaneous and outrageous spirit, even if it doesn't sound too different from a Bad Seeds' album.
In the same way his Murder Ballads had homicide, or The Boatman's Call reflected on love, Grinderman has sex on its mind - or a lack of it, as indicated by the amusing ode to one groupie's chastity that is No Pussy Blues ("I bought her a dozen snow white doves/I did her dishes in rubber gloves but she still didn't want to").
That one follows statement-of-intent opener Get It On, with Cave displaying his first of a few bouts of indelicate guitar onanism over a grinding Mission: Impossible theme-like groove.
And soon we meet the prowling Electric Alice or the apparently energetic Depth Charge Ethel ("she's something special") before Go Tell the Women, in which Cave sings those modern emasculated bloke blues.
The second half isn't quite as lecherous.With its brooding rhythm and rousing chorus, anti-love song (I Don't Need You To) Set Me Free could have been on the last Bad Seeds' album, as could its fellow parentheses-hungry frantic organ-grinding Honey Bee (Let's Fly to Mars).
On the few ballads - and maybe because he's off the piano stool - Cave sounds curiously Bowie-ish, whether it's the title track over spartan grinding bass or the space oddity-lament for an absent father that is Man in the Moon.
It finishes with one fast last long howl in Love Bomb, a quick-stepping gothic soul-blues. Like the rest of Grinderman, it shows that this might not be his deepest work.
But what it lacks in finesse it makes up for in wham-bam excitement. And it seems even without booking in under his own name, that old "Neek Cive" fella is as potent as ever.
Verdict: Nick Cave and some of his Bad Seeds don't venture far out of town on still-thrilling busman's holiday
Label: Mute