Melbourne’s original cowboy junkies nail their third consecutive winner while on the verge of collapse.
When the somewhat mannered Melbourne post-punk band The Boys Next Door transformed into the bleak, slaveringly unhinged unit as heard on their second album, they decided it merited a name change to The Birthday Party. Their brutal shift in sound might have seemed unprecedented at the time, but they at least had a couple things in common with The Fall. Both were inspired by Captain Beefheart, Pere Ubu and deconstructed rockabilly, and both were hugely misanthropic, bad-mouthing all other bands in the London scene, where the band had relocated to, except for maybe The Pop Group. The Fall’s misanthropy was based partly in intellectual snobbery, whereas the Birthday Party magnified their hatred into something visceral, degenerate and greasy. It sounds repulsive but it’s kind of sexy in a gross way, inspiring cartoon hearts and skulls in the eyes of boys and girls throughout the world. linked by a love of proto-goth (Bauhaus), apocalyptic dirges (P.i.L., Killing Joke), free jazz and no wave (DNA, The Contortions) and trashy pop culture and horror (The Cramps, Misfits). The Birthday Party might have aimed to be feared and hated, but even in their smack-addled haze, they were quite fun.
Vocalist/shrieker Nick Cave’s pretensions were starting to rear their hydra heads in his lyrics, including perversions of Flanner O’Connor’s Southern Gothic character studies, and the dark romanticism of Rimbaud and Baudelaire. But here he still sounded genuinely dangerous and unpredictable, with one of the most original vocal performances since Iggy Pop on Fun House (1970). And unlike most no-wave, or the early industrial scene, there was a twisted sensuality that added a welcome dimension, thanks partially to Cave’s girlfriend Anita Lane, who co-wrote “Dead Joe,” possibly inspired by J.G. Ballard’s novel Crash, and “Kiss Me Black,” with Cave hoarsely slurring come-ons in your ear, stinking of bourbon and absinthe. The single “Release the Bats” flirted with goth cliches via “sex vampires,” but they get a pass as they did it first. Those tracks, along with “Big-Jesus-Trash-Can” (evoking the whacky, classic Ed Roth cover art) got repeated rotations on the Fester’s Bucket O’ Nasties post-punk radio show, never failing to give a jolt of depraved energy, but also somehow fit snugly in next to the dark atmospherics of Pere Ubu, Beefheart and P.i.L.
The band were on the verge of collapse, as the chaos began to devour them from the inside out. They’d abandoned London by this time for West Berlin. Bassist Tracy Pew (the one with the cowboy hat, porn ‘stache, undulating in leather pants) was in jail for part of the recording, and drummer Phill Calvert was fired. Both Cave and guitarist Rowland S. Howard had serious heroin habits. Nevertheless, they kept it together enough to load the album with more great songs like the 6+ minute dirge “She’s Hit,” and “The Dim Locator,” where Howard’s guitar is the equivalent of a dozen tarantulas crawling over your face. The lurching “Several Sins” is their version of sea shanty, and the murderous “6” Gold Blade” (written by multi-instrumentalist secret weapon Mick Harvey) is still chilling.
Much was made of their influence on goth music. I suppose. But to my ears, the two most important successors were fellow Aussies Scientists, who underwent a similar feral transformation right when Junkyard was released, and over in Austin, Texas, Scratch Acid, and later The Jesus Lizard. Before the following EPs The Bad Seed and Mutiny! were released, the band had broken up. It’s just as well, as gorgeous as some of the noir balladry is, the literary direction Cave took with The Bad Seeds wouldn’t have suited such an unpredictable, untamable band.
#37 #5albums82
#41 Slicing Up Eyeballs
#33 Acclaimed Music
