2. Grinderman - Grinderman 2

‘Aging Lotharios Still Kicking Out the (Sex)Jams’ is not the most appealing headline, but grizzled anger-beasts Nick Cave, Warren Ellis and the rest of Grinderman make it work through pure charisma, chutzpah and awesomeness.  He’s old, he’s Nick Cave, and he’ll do whatever the hell he wants.  

It’s not all squalling guitars and dick-jokes though.  Cave remains an unashamed word-nerd, stuffing his lyrics with his usual array of dizzying verbal constructions.  Towards the end of the record pops up Palaces of Montezuma, the unexpected emotional core of the whole affair, and as delightfully Cave-y a love-song as you’ll find on any of the Bad Seeds records.  At the end of the day, of course it’s a bunch of old farts that made this album.  Twenty-five year olds couldn’t make this music, they’d sound preposterous.