Pitchfork

This song'll rub blisters on you. Nick Cave preaches trim and brimstone like the old Bad Seeds, but Warren Ellis from the Dirty Three, Bad Seed Martyn Casey, and Cramp/Bad Seed Jim Sclavunos form a blunter instrument: they aren't made for precision organ extractions, as the current, amorphous Bad Seed line-up is, though they're handy for hitting you about the head and face. For a song about not getting any, they put out plenty here, starting with a typewriter that turns into a high hat and ending with Cave dotting a noisy musical climax with excitable "whoo"'s and "damn"'s (usually my favorite part of any rock song).

Ellis almost steals Cave's thunder, letting loose a blast of violin noise at 1:36, shrill and ballsy by itself, but even harsher when layered like the brainwaves of the seething sexually frustrated. But it's Cave at the pulpit, holding forth with his usual viscera though not without a little humor: even funnier than his out-of-nowhere Marcel Marceau reference is the hint that a certain sex-tape actress/would-be pop star is the object of his ferociously unconsummated lust. "I even petted her revolting little Chihuahua", he confesses. If there's a God above, they'll duet on Murder Ballads II, his cocksure growl sidling up to her Martinized coo. Then again, that fantasy will likely remain as unfulfilled as this song's thwarted narrator.