Nick Cave was 50 years old when he released Grinderman, a desperate bid at recapturing his youth with unsubtle noise-rock-by-numbers freakouts such as “No Pussy Blues.” It’s a midlife crisis if I’ve ever seen one, like an old man popping Viagra because he doesn’t want to come to terms with the fact he no longer has any sex appeal. The only song title that doesn’t explicitly deal with manliness, sex, women, or sex with women is “(I Don’t Need You To) Set Me Free,” and you can tell from the title that the theme is still going to be nothing inspired.

The atonal post-punk guitar strumming and other contrived old tricks aren’t going to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes: Nick Cave is past his ability to convey chaotic primal fury like he used to be able to do in his earlier albums with The Birthday Party and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

“But all you’ve done is attack the personal value of this album, not the music itself!” I think the music is pretty mediocre too, generally. The guitars never give out a good hook, the bass lines in every song are near-identical (and since this is a post-punk album which is often very bass-driven, this is especially bad), Nick Cave tries to carry each song with his “swagger persona,” but his voice has been so hampered by aging and narcotics that he just sounds hilarious trying to come across as cool. It’s like hearing your grandpa forcing a voice he thinks is cool and/or sexy.

“(I Don’t Need You To) Set Me Free” has a nice vocal hook, and the keyboards of “Honey Bee (Let’s Fly to Mars)” save an otherwise average song, but for everything decent there’s another two of the quality of “Grinderman” or “Go Tell the Women.” Yuck. “When My Loves Come Down” actually sounds like an early Bad Seeds song too, I’ll be damned.

Nick Cave would later create more great work with the Bad Seeds, but it naturally came about when he learned to embrace his new pace in life instead of denying it outright. You can’t force writing great music, ever.