Crime & the City Solution- Paradise Discotheque (1990) MP3 & FLAC

Elektra ~ 1990

Tracklist/Info

Paradise Discotheque  in FLAC:  Grab, Try, Then Buy!

MP3 (320kbps)

Crime & the City Solution- Room of Lights (1986) MP3 & FLAC

Mute ~ 1996/1986

Tracklist/Info

 Room of Lights  in FLAC:  Grab, Try, Then Buy!

MP3 (320kbps)

The Birthday Party- Hee-Haw (1988) MP3 & FLAC -For Pieter-

"I put on my coat of trumpets. Will she be there? Is my piccolo on straight?"

Hee-Haw virtually defines the term "transitional," as it pairs the earliest releases by The Birthday Party with some of the final recordings Cave & co. made as The Boys Next Door. Five of these latter songs originally comprised The Boys Next Door's final release: the Hee-Haw EP, which, with its jagged rhythms and strangled melodies, has far more in common with the exceedingly dark aesthetic of The Birthday Party than with the band's earlier work on Door, Door. While The Birthday Party's initial recordings show a new-found abandon both in terms of instrumentation and Nick Cave's vocals, several songs such as "Happy Birthday" and "Waving My Arms" only occasionally wed this new approach to a memorable melody; however, there are some gems to be found on this compilation, such as "The Friend Catcher," which bear a much closer resemblance to the legendary trashcan Goth meets Appalachia sound that the band would perfect over the course of the next few years. In theory, this "odds and sods" collection shouldn't work as well as it does, but it provides an invaluable glance into the band's transformation after leaving Australia for greener commercial and artistic pastures in London.

Rowland S. Howard- Teenage Snuff Film (1999) MP3 & FLAC -R.I.P.-

"Crown prince of the crying jag, stuffs a towel in his mouth to gag."

After the demise of These Immortal Souls in 1992, Rowland S. Howard and his uncompromising brand of lush, skeletal Post-Punk gloom fell silent until his surprising re-emergence in 1999 with the stunningly dark Teenage Snuff Film. Easily one of the most distinctive guitarists to emerge from the early Post-Punk movement, Howard weaves his tortured, razor-sharp vamps into a starkly intense aural fabric on his solo debut. Songs such as "Dead Radio" and "Breakdown (And Then...)" immerse the listener into near-perfect distillations of Howard's unique musical vision: desolate, dusty ambiance cut through with a slightly refracted spaghetti-western twang and Howard's lovely wreck of a croon. Teenage Snuff Film even features a cover of Billy Idol's "White Wedding," but in Howard's hands, the song is transformed from bubble-gum goth into an ominously twisted waltz. And then there's "Autoluminescent," an absolutely gorgeous song of redemption, which exudes the kind of sincere, crumbling pathos that is rare to find in this age of commercially-packaged art. Highly recommended.

The Boys Next Door- Door, Door (1979) MP3 & FLAC

"I've been contemplating suicide, but it really doesn't suit my style."

In a time before murder ballads, mercy seats and birthday parties, a young, Australian middle-class malcontent named Nick Cave fronted a band called The Boys Next Door. Cave and his mates Mick Harvey, Tracy Pew, Phil Calvert, and later, Rowland S. Howard, spent their nights chasing a musical vision forged out of the British glam scene of the early seventies, the burgeoning Melbourne punk scene of the late seventies, and the darkest corners of the American country-folk and blues traditions. While the band's only album, the obscurely titled Door, Door, tends to get lost in the considerable shadow of what came next (the band's transformation into Goth legends The Birthday Party), it is actually a quite enjoyable slice of glammy Post-Punk pop that happens to contain a moment of transcendence: Rowland S. Howard's "Shivers." Musically, the song sounds as if pulled straight from the Ziggy Stardust songbook, but Cave's vocals, adopting the croon that would become the trademark of his early nineties solo work, lends the song a darker, slightly unhinged quality that gives Howard's fine lyrics even more of an air of authenticity. While the rest of the album pales in comparison, there are still some nice Post-Punk gems to be found, including "The Voice" and "Somebody's Watching."  Though certainly not as consistently memorable as The Birthday Party and Cave's solo work, Door, Door is still well worth a listen.

The Boys Next Door- "Shivers" (1979) Live

Amazing song by an amazing musician: Rowland S. Howard (R.I.P.). Oh, and a young Nick Cave singing it doesn't hurt either :)

The Birthday Party- Mutiny EP/The Bad Seed EP (1983) MP3 & FLAC

"Deep in the woods, a funeral is swinging."

This collection, comprised of two EPs released in 1983 by The Birthday Party on the eve of their acrimonious, drug-fueled dissolution, begins unforgettably with Nick Cave's backwoods-preacher exhortation, "Hands up! Who wants to die!?!," and only gets more apocalyptic from there. While offering, once again, their sleazy Post-Punk take on the Country-Blues mixed with a liberal dose of The Stooges, The Birthday Party's swan-song bears some marks of a transitional work. For example, while Cave's vocals still exude his familiar over-the-top morbidity, there seems to be a greater quotient of seriousness on these EPs, which contrasts with earlier recordings, where Cave, Rowland & co. often served up their blood-soaked sermons with a subtle wink of the eye. This and the more polished production cause songs such as "Deep in the Woods" and "Sonny's Burning" to sound like something of a blueprint for Cave's next venture, The Bad Seeds, a name nicked, incidentally, from the title of one of these EPs. In fact, many of these songs sound like an early precursor to Murder Ballads, which, come to think of it, isn't a bad thing at all.