As 2010 winds down, we’ve still got a bunch of potentially terrific shows to look forward to, including Ludacris at the Allstate Arena (Sunday), Elvis Costello at the Chicago Theatre (Monday) and the Hold Steady at Lincoln Hall (Dec. 30), plus a gaggle of New Year’s Eve shows that we’ll preview in future columns.

But it’s also time to take stock and look back on a year of heavy-duty concert-going. Out of more than 100 shows I attended, here are my favorites from 2010:

1. Gorillaz, Oct. 16 at UIC Pavilion: The cartoon band invented by Blur’s Damon Albarn and Jamie “Tank Girl” Hewlett more than a decade ago has morphed into a real band, with more than 30 musicians and singers, including a core group built on former Clash members Mick Jones and Paul Simonon. Albarn orchestrates it all, blending hip-hop, dub reggae, Eastern music, punk, soul and myriad other genres into a soundtrack for a dying planet that doesn’t sound like a eulogy at all. Instead, it becomes one the year’s biggest dance parties. 

The women in Nick Cave’s Grinderman songs come on strong. A worm tamer, heathen child and spider goddess -- they’re a handful. The guys should be overwhelmed, but they act like they’ve got nothing to lose except their dignity.

 At the Riviera on Monday, Grinderman explored and exploded the tension in Cave’s songs: on one side, subject matter cloaked in biblical drama; on the other, the psychosexual splatter of pulp novels, low-budget noir movies and bad drunks talking to themselves at the end of a bar.

 That collision is what makes Grinderman grind, and Cave and his accomplices – multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn Casey, drummer Jim Sclavunos – jumped into the ready-made conflict with glee.

Grinderman: Nick Cave is never lacking in intensity, but things go to a whole new level of nastiness with Grinderman, a smaller, punkier offshoot of his longtime band, the Bad Seeds, 8 p.m. Monday at Riviera, 4746 N. Racine, $28; etix.com.

greg@gregkot.com

3.5 stars (out of 4)

Nick Cave pared down his longtime band, the Bad Seeds, to a lean, mean quartet in 2007 to make the first Grinderman album. It had all the earmarks of a mid-life crisis: A bunch of aging hell-raisers revisiting their chaotic roots in punk-blues. But Cave and his accomplices – Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos – subverted that premise with wicked humor, embracing their fading youth with self-deprecating cackles and gleeful cacophony. Next to the Bad Seeds’ orchestral dynamism, Grinderman sounded like undiluted nastiness, a black comedy of shrieks, howls and leers.

The project was invigorating enough for all involved to inspire a sequel, and “Grinderman 2” (Anti) is in many ways even more outrageous. In contrast to the Bad Seeds, the music is less fussed-over, a collection of studio jams by the quartet that has been pounded into loose shape. The effect is disorienting, the instruments often sounding like they’re throwing tantrums or coughing up fur balls while trying to keep what’s left of the song on course. Casey’s bass is the beast in the room, stomping where it will, hacking a path through the maelstrom of Ellis’ backfiring stringed instruments, Cave’s rude guitar and Sclavunos’ rampaging drums. Even the quiet moments sound disturbing, with tambourines rattling, organ droning, and Cave muttering.

The singer’s savage spew is more about id than intellect, suggesting hallucinations teeming with lust and pulp-fiction action scenes. His narrators become feral predators (wolves, the Loch Ness Monster, Mickey Mouse!) haunted by avenging angels, “Miles Davis the black unicorn” and Eastern deities. Typically, the quietest song just may be the most disturbing of all. In “What I Know,” Cave dials down the fiercely vivid imagery for a stark meditation on sex and death that leaves almost everything to the listener’s imagination, accompanied by little more than the crackle of static. Pleasant dreams.

greg@gregkot.com