Album: Grinderman

"I've got to get up to get down and start all over again," claims Nick Cave at the start of "Get It On", the opening track of this debut album by his new band Grinderman. And, although the band isn't strictly new in that it comprises three members of The Bad Seeds (violinist Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn Casey and drummer Jim Sclavunos), you get the general idea, as the hyper-distorted guitar loop, percussion and lone piano chord that accompany Cave's ranted "words of wisdom" make for a more dramatic opening salvo than he's wielded in some time.

The album is strung, in time and intention, between that track and the closing "Love Bomb" where, over trills of waspish guitar, the singer admits he's "been listening to the radio, trying to find some self-expression" - a burst of Talking Heads-style frustration that is the key to the creative impetus. Stranded in airwaves entirely populated by the meek and orderly and emotionally bogus, Cave and co presumably realised that if they wanted to hear music with the sheer viscerality of early rock'n'roll, R&B and soul - not to mention garage psychedelia, Velvets drone and Krautrock groove - they'd just have to make it themselves.

Frustration is at the heart of Grinderman. Songs like "Honey Bee (Let's Fly to Mars)" and "No Pussy Blues" cut straight to the meat of the matter, the former's surging organ and guitar riff sounding like a rampant union between "Louie Louie" and "Mony Mony", while the latter employs a venomous variation of the extemporised blues style of Lightnin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker for a suitably frustrated litany of sexual failure, all of Cave's seductive gambits - writing poetry, sending flowers, getting drunk, acting sensitive, acting tough, etc - eliciting the same result: "But she didn't want to." It's something of a relief when, a few tracks later, he hooks up with "Depth Charge Ethel", a carnal force of nature.

Emotions are just as highly charged elsewhere, with the disaffection of "(I Don't Need You To) Set Me Free" apparent in the slashed and scarified surface of its anthemic groove, the haunting mystery of "Electric Alice" captured with a naggingly discordant blend of violin and distorted organ that recalls both Can and the Velvets, and the yearning orphan loneliness of "Man In the Moon" evoked by the melancholy blend of electric piano and hissing Leslie-cabinet ambience. Even grim futility and boredom has its rightful place here. Grinderman can be a uncomfortable journey at times, but there's no denying the authentically corroded emotional presence that exerts such a mesmeric grip.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Get It On', 'No Pussy Blues', 'Electric Alice', 'Go Tell the Women'