Music

It’s perhaps no great surprise that the thrillingly foul breath of Cave’s recent Grinderman project has pumped life into his Bad Seeds. The dazzling double opus that was 2004’s ‘Abattoir Blues’/‘Lyre Of Orpheus’ would have left lesser bands gasping for creative oxygen, but their thirteenth studio LP rather suggested a band with limitless artistic energy and endurance.

Their wryly titled latest – implying as it does revivification, escape and hepcat cool – proves that to be so. We’re loathe to mention birthdates, but these 45-plus dudes kick ass more meanly, more enthusiastically and – crucially – more convincingly than most bands half their age. The visceral immediacy that drove ‘Grinderman’ holds sway here, while its free-wheeling rockisms, its roughness, readiness and general sexy impulsiveness have also rubbed off.

‘Albert Goes West’ and ‘Lie Down Here (And Be My Girl)’ show Cave and co as spiritual siblings of The Stooges, Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr and Pixies, while even the sweetly lowering ‘Jesus Of The Moon’ subverts Seeds type with a flute. Some may bemoan the record’s looseness; let them – while the rest of us rock out.