Behind those homemade posters you see stuck on lampposts seeking the return of missing cats lies a world of anxiety, pain and loss. Nick Cave is probably the first singer ever to really capture the sense of torment that losing the family cat can mean. That’s what makes No Pussy Blues such a great song with a timeless message for pet owners. I think that’s what it’s about.

As well as being the greatest living Australian Cave has a fair claim to be the best musician working at the minute. His new album Grinderman 2 is just the latest in a catalogue marked by all sorts of surprising turns but with very strict quality control. It’s something of a miracle that his lyrics don’t get him into more trouble.

Lines like “the spinal cord of JFK wrapped up in Marilyn Monroe’s negligee I give to you” as well as revealing an unordinary imagination could, by some sensitive types, be seen as just a little off colour. We’ll not even go into the consequences of “She don’t care about Allah, she is the Allah” getting a lot of daytime radio play.

Tonight’s show was in the Coronet in Elephant and Castle. If we extend the metaphor in the song London You’re A Lady the Elephant would be her anus. As for the venue the kindest thing you can say about it is that it’s only a couple of hundred yards from the tube station. A twenty minute queue in the rain earned you the sort of body search and welcome that someone starting a thirty year stretch for organising Al Qaeda’s paedophile wing would have found chilly.

As soon as Grinderman took the stage it all seemed worthwhile. The four of them seem to channel their inner demons through the music. It’s blistering and aggressive and yet can make a couple of thousand people deliriously happy. We have to hope that Warren Ellis’ violin teacher never got to hear some of the noises . They are terrifying screeching walls of sound and the perfect foil to Cave’s bizarre lyrics. However, if he wants my advice, and there’s no reason why he should, his dignity is slightly compromised by performing sitting on the stage and kicking his legs in the air. To which I’d add that all four band members should wear protective glasses when he’s banging the crap out of those symbols with his maracas.

Despite being a superbly charismatic frontman Cave isn’t that talkative. Some poor Australian called out for The Mercy Seat to be told that news that he was performing with a different band had been sent by ship to the home country. But gosh he makes up for it with a relentlessly physical performance in which he works the crowd, swaggers with his guitar and dances at his keyboard.

In a set that was never less than brilliant the closing  version of Grinderman may well have been the highlight, emphasising a didgeridoo drone that is less apparent on the album version.

This is a band at the top of its game. Go and see them.

 This video of their track Palaces of Montezuma is as fine performance as you are ever likely to see. A productive way to spend the fifteen seconds of Jules Holland’s burbling is to thump a cushion and pretend that you are smashing his fingers with a brick so that he’ll never again play boogie woogie piano with a silly grin.