THE BIRTHDAY PARTY: JUNKYARD (1982)
1) Blast Off; 2) She's Hit; 3)
Dead Joe; 4) The Dim Locator; 5) Hamlet; 6) Several Sins; 7)
Big-Jesus-Trash-Can; 8) Kiss Me Black; 9) 6" Gold Blade; 10) Kewpie Doll;
11) Junkyard; 12*) Dead Joe; 13*) Release The Bats.
This is a monster
record if there ever was one. Okay, there was one: Fun House by the Stooges, released twelve years earlier. But in a
whole twelve years, during which dozens of genres had come and gone, the world
hadn't truly seen another monster record. Punk, post-punk, heavy metal, Goth,
sheer sonic hooliganry Throbbing Gristle-style, the world had it all, but
nothing really came close to the blazing, genuinely frightening musical hell of
Fun House. Somebody had to match that achievement in the
Eighties, and why are we not surprised that the «somebody» would be Mr.
Nicholas Edward Cave from Australia?
The nightmarish fun begins already on the album
sleeve — look at the picture closely and yes, this is more or less what the
music sounds like. The color palette is a little too... colorful, perhaps (I'd
rather see this in black and white), but other than that, the diversity of
elements, their absurdity, their energized appearance, and their sheer
ugliness, everything driven to hyperbolic heights, totally fits in with the
songs, or, rather, the nightmarish rituals that The Birthday Party has chosen
to perform. And I'm assuming that the album sleeve pictures their sacred altar.
Interestingly enough, the original LP, which
only contained ten tracks, did not start with ʽBlast Off!ʼ — it was the B-side
to a concurrent single. When the album was released on CD, however, the song
was not simply tacked on as a bonus track (like its A-side, ʽRelease The Batsʼ,
notable for being the «Goth»-est number released by the band and allegedly much
favored by Bauhaus fans); instead, they put it on top as the album's flagman,
for reasons so obvious that it is now hard for me to imagine how Junkyard would have ever fared without
it. Briefly put, ʽBlast Off!ʼ is a loud and proud signal for that thingamabob
on the album sleeve to... blast off. This is Captain Beefheart gone berserk, a
flurry of avantgarde-influenced drum rolls, bass runs, and dissonant guitar
shrieks, on top of which Crazy Captain Cave announces that the band is finally moving
out. Prayers On Fire showed us the
mustering of the forces inside the asylum; Junkyard
flings the asylum doors open, and out pours the scary army of Lunacy, Epilepsy,
and Maniac Behavior.
Viewed from that angle, the first side of Junkyard is pretty much flawless. Most
of the tunes deal with violence and death; only one, ʽThe Dim Locatorʼ, focuses
primarily on pure insanity as such — the melody can be traced all the way back
to Kurt Weill, but the mood is «square root of Jim Morrison multiplied by Iggy
Pop», and now they have this disgustingly dirty, swampy, lo-fi, echoey
production, too, that makes it all sound like it was recorded in a particularly
filthy sewer. One in which a zombie-faced Nick Cave is wading, knee-dip in muck
and shit, grumbling and snarling: "They call me Dim, I am the Dim Locator,
loco-lomo-loco-lomo-wow-wow-wow". It ain't a pretty sight, but it sure
looks realistic enough to want to take cover.
But a bigger bet is staked on sheer visceral
brutality: ʽDead Joeʼ jackhammers your guts into your spine with Motörhead
intensity, as the song tries to recreate the impression of a «car crash apocalypse»
and the ensuing panic ("you can't tell the girls from the boys
anymore"), and ʽHamlet (Pow, Pow, Pow!)ʼ does the same thing, but sadistically
takes extra time to arrive at the desired effect — the «Hamlet» in question,
transferred to modern times, is now the equivalent of a religious psychopath
("Hamlet got a gun now, he wears a crucifix"), a hidden menace that
trots around at a brisk jazzy tempo before exploding, every once in a while, in
a series of snarling pow-pow-pows as «Hamlet» gets carried away.
On the other side of the street, ʽShe's Hitʼ
andʽSeveral Sinsʼ move slowly and refrain from descending into sheer utter
epileptic madness, but then again, even the maddest madmen should take a break
from rolling on the floor foaming at the mouth from time to time. And there is
some genuine emotional depth here — behind all the discordant jazz-punk wailing
of ʽShe's Hitʼ Nick manages to put down an atmosphere of tragic sadness, while
ʽSeveral Sinsʼ counts off the beginning of his fire-and-brimstone streak
("I forgot to tell you several things, Ma, I forgot to tell you 'bout the seven
sins"). The song is also interesting in that it announces the arrival of
Barry Adamson, temporarily replacing Tracy Pew on bass while the latter was
doing a two-month term for drunk driving — Adamson would later go on to become
one of the Bad Seeds. Not that ʽSeveral Sinsʼ is a particularly complex track,
bass-wise, but Barry quickly gets in the general gloomy groove of the band, and
helps make the song a true «dead letter tale» as it promises in its opening
line. The only question is, how in the world could they all turn in such a
credible performance when they barely had something like twenty-five years or
so to indulge in the seven sins?
If there is one general flaw on Junkyard, it is the length: forty
minutes may be a bit too much even for the veteran listener, especially
considering that Side B of the disc does not stray too far from the same
territory, and may give the impression of the band getting a little tired, or
maybe it's just the listener who got tired. ʽBig Jesus Trash Canʼ walks pretty
much the same turf as ʽBlast Off!ʼ, ʽKiss Me Blackʼ raises the same ruckus as
ʽDead Joeʼ, the title track is a slow-burning dirge that does not exceed the
effects of ʽShe's Hitʼ, and so on. Individually, each song is strong, but
collectively, it does begin to get a bit samey after a while, and this, I am
afraid to say, cheapens the overall experience: being shocked to the bone at
the sight of an epileptic shaking in convulsions is one thing — having to watch
him do it for half an hour and slowly getting used to it, let alone getting bored with it, is another. Consequently,
it might make sense to listen to Junkyard
one side at a time.
No matter what your particular preference might
be, though, Junkyard remains the album that The Birthday Party was
sent into this world to leave us with. Some might find it too far out, too violent,
too messy, and prefer the slightly more subtle and, if I may say so, slightly
more «poppy» Prayers On Fire
instead, but the way I see it, if you are born into this world to be a
gut-puller, then the harder you pull on those guts, the better you are fulfilling
your destiny. On Junkyard, Nick and
his friends are not merely engaging in senseless musical hooliganry — they are
engineering an avantgarde masterpiece that may not be as inventive and
revolutionary as Trout Mask Replica,
but sounds much more meaningful to my ears. This is more than just a regular thumbs up:
Junkyard should, by all means, end
up on all the representative top lists for the decade.
Check "Junkyard" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Junkyard" (MP3) on Amazon
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