Artist: Birthday Party Genre(s):
Other
Discography:
The Peel Sessions Year: 1988
Tracks: 4
Junkyard Year: 1982
Tracks: 13
Prayers On Fire Year: 1981
Tracks: 13
The Birthday Party were ane of the darkest and nigh challenging post-punk groups to come out in the early '80s, creating bare and noisy soundscapes that provided the perfect setting for vocaliser Nick Cave's difficult, worrisome stories of religion, violence, and perversity. Under the way of Cave and guitar player Rowland S. Howard, the band tore through reams of blues and rockabilly licks, expectoration out hellacious feedback and noise at an unrelenting pace. As the Birthday Party's life history progressed, Cave's visual sensation got darker and the band's songs alternated 'tween dirges to blistering sonic assaults.
In the beginning, the Australian band was called the Boys Next Door, comprising Cave, Howard, Mick Harvey (guitar, drums, harmonium, piano), bassist Tracy Pew, and drummer Phill Calvert. After the
Door Door album and
Hee Haw EP under that name, the ring moved to London and switched its call to the deceptively benign Birthday Party. Once they arrived in Britain, their disturbed, knotty post-punk began to gel. They released their first external album,
Prayers on Fire, in 1981, earning critical praise in the U.K. and U.S. While the band was preparing to record the follow-up, Pew was jailed for drunk drive; other Magazine member Barry Adamson, Harry Howard, and Chris Walsh filled in for the absentminded Pew on 1982's
Junkyard.
After the discharge of
Junkyard, the Birthday Party pink-slipped Calvert and touched to Germany, where they began collaborating with such experimental post-punk acts of the Apostles like Lydia Lunch and Einstürzende Neubauten. Harvey left hand in the summer of 1983. The grouping in brief continued with drummer Des Heffner, but it shortly disbanded subsequently a concluding concert in Melbourne, Australia. Cave had the to the highest degree successful solo career, recording a series of albums in the '80s and '90s that retained his position as a popular cult figure; Harvey linked Cave's patronage band, the Bad Seeds. Howard linked Crime & the City Solution, which as well featured his brother Harry and Harvey.
