''Grinderman 2'' is the second and final studio album by

alternative rock Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from Popular culture, mainstre ...

band

Grinderman Grinderman was an Australian-American rock band that formed in London, England, in 2006. The band included Nick Cave (vocals, guitar, organ, piano), Warren Ellis (tenor guitar, electric mandolin, violin, viola, guitar, backing vocals), Martyn ...

, a side project of

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are an Australian rock music, rock band formed in 1983 by vocalist Nick Cave, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and guitarist-vocalist Blixa Bargeld. The band has featured international personnel throughout its care ...

, released on 13 September 2010 on

Mute Records Mute Records is a British independent record label owned and founded in 1978 by Daniel Miller. It has featured several prominent musical acts on its roster such as Depeche Mode, Erasure, Einstürzende Neubauten, Fad Gadget, Goldfrapp, Grinderm ...

in the United Kingdom and

ANTI- Anti- is an American record label founded in 1999 as a sister label to Epitaph Records. While Epitaph's focus has mostly been on punk rock, Anti-'s roster includes gospel (Mavis Staples), country (Merle Haggard), hip hop (Sage Francis, The Cou ...

in the United States. At the

ARIA Music Awards of 2011 The 25th Annual Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards (generally known as ARIA Music Awards or simply The ARIAs) were a series of award ceremonies which included the 2011 ARIA Artisan Awards, ARIA Hall of Fame Awards, ARIA Fi ...

, the album was nominated for

ARIA Award for Best Adult Alternative Album The ARIA Music Award for Best Adult Alternative Album is an award presented at the annual ARIA Music Awards. The ARIA Awards recognise "the many achievements of Aussie artists across all music genres", and have been given by the Australian Reco ...

Background and production

Grinderman had been put on hold due to the members' involvement on

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are an Australian rock music, rock band formed in 1983 by vocalist Nick Cave, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and guitarist-vocalist Blixa Bargeld. The band has featured international personnel throughout its care ...

' fourteenth studio album, ''

Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! ''Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!'' is the fourteenth studio album by Australian rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The album was recorded in June and July 2007 at The State of the Ark Studios in Richmond, London and mixed by Nick Launay at British ...

'', in 2008. After the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds summer tour in 2008, the band began recording the album in various studios throughout London. Speaking to XFM, Cave noted that the album "will feature a totally different sound" and plan to "do it a more serious way this time"; he remarked that he did not plan for the album to receive commercial success. Recording was completed in August 2009—a year after the original sessions—production was completed in April 2010 at Seedy Underbelly in Los Angeles, and the album was produced by

Nick Launay Nicolas Launay is an English record producer, composer and recording engineer. He is one of the most sought after record producers in the world due to his success with recent albums by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Anna Calvi, IDLES, Black Reb ...

, a friend of the band, who had also produced Grinderman's self-titled debut, with additional production by the members of the band. In an interview with ''

The Quietus ''The Quietus'' is a British online music and pop culture magazine founded by John Doran and Luke Turner. The site is an editorially independent publication led by Doran with a group of freelance journalists and critics. Content ''The Quiet ...

'' in September 2009,Ellis, Warren. "'Psychedelic' New Grinderman Album". ''The Quietus''. September 9, 2009. Retrieved on June 5, 2010. Warren Ellis confirmed that ''Grinderman 2'' was completed. Ellis also described the album as "like

stoner rock Stoner rock, also known as stoner metal or stoner doom, is a rock music fusion genre that combines elements of doom metal with psychedelic rock and acid rock. The genre emerged during the early 1990s and was pioneered foremost by Kyuss and Sleep. ...

meets

Sly Stone Sylvester Stewart (born March 15, 1943), better known by his stage name Sly Stone, is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer who is most famous for his role as frontman for Sly and the Family Stone, playing a critical role in the ...

via

Amon Düül Amon Düül was a West German political art commune formed out of the student movement of the 1960s that became well known for its free-form musical improvisations. This spawned two rock groups, Amon Düül (sometimes referred to as Amon Düü ...

", "very diverse", and "psychedelic." The album was released in September 2010, in a regular and a deluxe edition, the latter containing a 52-page booklet (illustrations by Ilinca Höpfner) and a poster (photography by

Polly Borland Polly Borland (born 1959) is an Australian photographer who formerly resided in England from 1989 to 2011, and now lives in Los Angeles, United States. She is known both for her editorial portraits and for her work as a photographic artist. Bi ...

Singles

The album's first single, " Heathen Child," was released in September 2010. The music video was directed by long-time collaborator

John Hillcoat John Hillcoat (born 1960) is an Australian-Canadian film director, screenwriter, and music video director. Early life Hillcoat was born in Queensland, Australia, and was raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. As a child, his paintings were featur ...

. " Worm Tamer", the second single, was released on 22 November. The music video was directed by

Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard are British artists and filmmakers. Life and work Forsyth and Pollard met and began working collaboratively while studying Fine Art and Art Theory at Goldsmiths College, graduating together in 1995. They initially f ...

Critical reception

''Grinderman 2'' received mostly positive reviews, with some critics finding the album superior to its predecessor, ''

'', and holds an 83 score on

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, denoting "universal acclaim." Thom Jurek of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

said it was a "more polished and studied affair than its predecessor" and "more sonically adventurous" while still being a "white-hot rock and roll record." It has been described as "full of nightmares, but nightmares worth repeating." Garry Mulholland of

BBC Music BBC Music is responsible for the music played across the BBC. The current director of music is Bob Shennan, who is also the controller of BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 6 Music, and the BBC Asian Network. Officially it is a part of the BBC's Radio o ...

said that ''Grinderman 2'' had a sound, influenced as much by 60s

garage punk A garage is a covered structure built for the purpose of parking, storing, protecting, maintaining, and/or repairing vehicles. Specific applications include: *Garage (residential), a building or part of a building for storing one or more vehicle ...

and droning

Krautrock Krautrock (also called , German for ) is a broad genre of experimental rock Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments ...

as the

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

Track listing

The

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...

LP will also include bonus videos of "Heathen Child", seven trailers for the album, directed by John Hillcoat and Ilinca Hoepfner and a

digital booklet Digital booklet is the digital equivalent of booklet attached to physical release that often accompany digital music purchases. They are most commonly distributed in PDF. One well-known distributor of digital booklets with digital purchases is the ...

complete with lyrics.

Personnel

;Grinderman * Martyn Casey –

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

, acoustic

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are use ...

, assistant

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stati ...

Nick Cave Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor. Known for his baritone voice and for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Ca ...

–

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...

, organ,

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

art direction Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and unify the visi ...

, assistant production *

Warren Ellis Warren Girard Ellis (born 16 February 1968) is a British comic book writer, novelist, and screenwriter. He is best known as the co-creator of several original comics series, including ''Transmetropolitan'' (1997–2002), ''Global Frequency'' ( ...

– acoustic guitar,

viola The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

, electric

bouzouki The bouzouki (, also ; el, μπουζούκι ; alt. pl. ''bouzoukia'', from Greek ), also spelled buzuki or buzuci, is a musical instrument popular in Greece. It is a member of the long-necked lute family, with a round body with a flat top and ...

, electric

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

, backing vocals, assistant production * Jim Sclavunos –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

, backing vocals, assistant production ;Production personnel *Russell Fawkus – assistant production (at Assault & Battery 2) *David "Saxon" Greenep – assistant production (at State of the Ark) *Tom Hough – assistant production (at State of the Ark) *

– production,

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

*Kevin Paul – assistant production ;Art personnel *Polly Borland – photography *Tom Hingston – art direction *Ilinca Höpfner – illustration

Chart positions

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Release history

References

{{Authority control Mute Records albums Albums produced by Nick Launay Grinderman albums Anti- (record label) albums 2010 albums