GIG REVIEW - GRINDERMAN - GLASGOW BARROWLANDS - TUESDAY 28th SEPTEMBER 2010

It's about 45mins since Grinderman left the stage at Glasgow Barrowlands. I reckon it was 15 songs including the encore over about 85 mins. Not one of the songs was a cover, nor were any of them stuff from The Birthday Party or The Bad Seeds. And at £25 a ticket, plus booking fee, you might think I'm going to grumble about being disappointed or feeling ripped-off.

Far from it. For this was a blinding live show. One of the best in years. Honestly.

That I'm making such a claim may come as a surprise for those of you who have dismissed Grinderman records as being the Nick Cave equivalent of Tin Machine - and to be fair, there's a few times I've thought the same myself - but with musicians of the quality of Martyn P Casey, Warren Ellis and Jim Sclavunos on board there was always a fair chance it would be entertaining.

But I never anticipated mind-blowing.

The main set was drawn mainly from songs on Grinderman 2, an album that has had the critics fawning. Me?? Was so-so about first few listens, but over past few days have accepted it is a reasonable record let down by two or three average songs. But tonight, even the most average of songs was transformed beyond recognition.

Kitchenette is a track which drags and plods on for over 5 minutes on record but which tonight was turned into the most erotic, sexy, sassy and knicker-wetting number since Prince was at his peak all those years ago. Nick Cave, shirt open almost to the navel, sweat pouring off him as he pounced across the stage like a lion king on heat singing and rapping about how he could make a bored housewife feel good again......let's just say, Mrs Villain would have left me for him right there and then if she was given the chance.

I don't know how many of you have ever been to the Barrowlands - its one of those old fashioned grimy venues in a rundown part of town that many promoters avoid nowadays. They don't like it cos the bars are too small and you dont make enough money and there's hardly any room to sell t-shirts and the like. You cant quite squeeze every penny out of the punters - they're too busy working up a sweat in a low-roofed venue with a wide stage which has an astonishing, almost magical ability to bring out the best in a band. And inevitably, the crowd responds by going apeshit.

It was that kind of night.

But at one point it did threaten to go pear-shaped when the encore began with what i think is a rather lacklustre song Man In The Moon from the debut LP. But it was extended out way beyond its 2 mins on record to something truly spectacular - I couldnt help but compare it to the final few minutes of Paranoid Android........

And to close it all off, we had the song Grinderman. All four band members playing as if their very lives depended on it - Ellis in particular looking like a 21st century Rasputin staring down his would be killers and trying to hypnotise them with his banging of his cymbals and his dervish playing of his violin.

Nick Cave had us all believing his closing words - 'I'm The Grinderman, Yes I Am.' But I reckon that many of us would have also believed him if he had sang that he was The King......