Author: Urban Bolta
Location: Križanke / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 08.10.2010
Attendance: 3500
Ticket price: 35€ (presale) / 40€ (day of show)
A few years back, the sunny side of the Alps was chronically short on gigs by mid-sized and big-name acts, but lately that’s improved a lot. There’s Kino Šiška, the new Stožice arena is there for the mega-popular acts, and of course Križanke is still in the mix. The capital’s lineup has gotten way better, and I’m genuinely happy to see that we can now catch a recognizable world-class name several times a month. Sure, you’d always want even more of these events, but compared to the poverty and emptiness that ruled around here just a few years ago, we music gourmands in 2010 no longer have the right to go around mudslinging and whining about everything. In just a few days, Ljubljana hosted two big names from the innermost circle of the world’s music elite. Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen.
On a cold October Saturday, Križanke was waiting for its old acquaintance, Nick Cave. But this time in a slightly different role than usual. Nick Cave came to Križanke with Grinderman, a project he’s been throwing himself into for the last half decade and with which he’s already put out two studio albums, the latest, “Grinderman 2”, just a month before the Ljubljana visit, and the European tour was held to promote it. Cave, along with his old pals from the Bad Seeds (Bed Seeds), guitar-slingers Warren Ellis and Martyn Casey and drummer Jim Sclavunos, was greeted by a packed Križanke auditorium, which was a nice send-off into a long-awaited top-notch concert night.
The show opened with Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man, which also opens the band’s second album. Grinderman had started to roar! The tightly drilled band shifted straight into fifth gear right from the start and launched into its set with no brakes. Riding on a powerful bass line, dynamic structures and raging peaks of cranked-up, distorted guitars, the evening rolled on, weaving songs from the first and second albums together, and it cemented my belief once and for all that heading to Križanke was the right move. Naturally, most of the spotlights on stage are drawn by Nick Cave, whose one-of-a-kind performance takes the listener deep into the realms of Grinderman music. Despite an injured toe, which Cave moaned about, this unique musician didn’t save a drop of energy, wringing new and newer atoms of power out of his body (and throat), so that at times it felt like this was his last concert ever. Adding to the dynamism of the stage show, besides the band’s main figure, is guitarist Warren Ellis, interesting already for his shaggy, “ZZ Top-style” beard, with an added bonus of his energetic, raw approach to playing guitar, which overshadows his two instrumental colleagues in the band.
Through Heathen Children, the furious Evil and My Baby Comes, the show rolled into its second half, and Grinderman kept proving the point that this is a very solid, cohesive and well-oiled unit that doesn’t rest only on the fame of its frontman, but where everyone adds their own piece to the shared mosaic that brings success. With their confident performance, the band won the crowd over, and they pulled off the vocal harmonies without a hitch, which is usually no easy feat at live shows. With Bellringer Blues, the main part of the concert ended (too soon), and four more songs in the encore, with the epic Grinderman to close, weren’t enough to stretch the show to much more than an hour and a half, which left a lump in my throat despite the excellent performance. I fear the times when concerts of this length become so cemented that we won’t even consider them short anymore. Good thing we still have performers like Leonard Cohen among us! Length aside, though, the Ljubljana crowd got yet another great concert, tailor-made for all fans of garage sound with dirty blues grips, so, Grinderman.. “hats off”!
photos: Simon Podgoršek
Setlist
1. Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man 2. Worm Tamer 3. Get It On 4. Heathen Child 5. Palaces Of Montezuma 6. Evil 7. When My Baby Comes 8. What I Know 9. Honey Bee (Let’s Fly To Mars) 10. Kitchenette 11. No Pussy Blues 12. Bellringer Blues —————– 13. When My Love Comes Down 14. Man in the Moon 15. Love Bomb 16. Grinderman
Photo gallery
