album // Junkyard
Few album titles accurately describe the content
as Junkyard so cleverly does, implying a tangled mess of
music, filled with all sorts of sonic detritus. It's perversely-beautiful
front cover, designed by Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth, evokes the
same image, perfectly in tune with the spirit of the music herein.
The junk-punk spirit is most prevalent on tracks
such as 'Big Jesus Trash Can', 'Kiss Me Black', 'Hamlet' and 'Blast
Off!', at times pushing ahead into a sort of post-jazz improvising
session. Though obviously well-rehearsed and well-tested in the
live arena, the loose production seems to prevent the band from
becoming too honed, imbuing these tracks with a dishevelled, childish,
'first take' production ethic, almost allowing the band to sound
like the aural equivalent of the sleeve's band photos - unkempt,
scruffy and raw. The tracks were recorded in Melbourne with Tony
Cohen and in London with Richard Mazda, while 'Release
The Bats' and 'Blast Off!' were produced by the band and Nick
Launey.
The Birthday Party here found a formula and
worked it, literally until the limbs started to fall off. Rowland
S Howard's spindly guitar is inventive, working well against
Mick Harvey's counter-weighted and controlled lines; Tracy
Pew - the iconic, muscular bassist, a sort of Village People
meets redneck Texan - lays down superb and gritty low-end anchorage,
while Phil Calvert, the wimpy, out-of-place drummer is here
ousted on several of the more intense tracks in favour of Harvey's
esoteric and adaptable playing. The direction they began to move
in with Junkyard was the clear tolling of Calvert's death
knell. Nick Cave's vocals are most obviously reminiscent
of a squealing, castrated pig allowed to run riot with his feral
autistic / artistic, pissed-evangelist wordplay.
'She's Hit' and 'Dead Joe' are perhaps the finest
moments here, the former a slow funeral procession-paced affair;
the latter, written with Anita Lane, is a brutal
putsch of a track simultaneously recalling Mad Max and JG Ballard
while doing 150mph along the freeway. Velocity and momentum are
central to these tracks, the former like a slinky haphazardly traversing
the stairs under its own leisurely steam, the latter an unstoppable
engine-driven ride that could only ever fizzle out after two minutes.
When applying some restraint, The Birthday Party
proved - on tracks such as 'Several Sins' and '6" Gold Blade'
- that they were actually pretty fine musicians, who just happened
to enjoy the gleeful abandon that charging headlong into the more
ragged tracks allowed. Both tracks feature some fine, physical bass
from the late Pew, rumbling along underneath like some out of control
U-bahn train.
'Junkyard' evokes the murder song spirit that would
guide some of Cave's later work, its graphic wordplay describing
some grisly sackload of writhing torment, Howard's guitar coming
in like waves of reedy feedback behind and above the howling, whining
vocals.
cd:
1. Blast Off
2. She's Hit
3. Dead Joe
4. The Dim Locator
5. Hamlet (Pow, Pow, Pow)
6. Several Sins
7. Big-Jesus-Trash-Can
8. Kiss Me Black
9. 6" Gold Blade
10. Kewpie Doll
11. Junkyard
12. Dead Joe (2nd Version)
13. Release The Bats
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