The Birthday Party (The Birthday Party album)

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The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (The Birthday Party album).jpg
Studio album by
The Boys Next Door / The Birthday Party
ReleasedNovember 1980
RecordedJuly 1979, January–February 1980
StudioRichmond Recorders, Melbourne
Genre Post-punk
Length32:00
Label Missing Link Records [1]
CBS Records
4AD
Producer The Boys Next Door, Tony Cohen, Keith Glass
The Boys Next Door / The Birthday Party chronology
Hee Haw (EP)
(1979)		The Birthday Party
(1980)		 Prayers on Fire
(1981)
Alternative cover art
Birthday Party album cover.jpg
1982 Re-issue cover
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [2]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svg [3]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svgStar empty.svg [4]

The Birthday Party is a 1980 album credited to Australian rock band the Boys Next Door / the Birthday Party under both names as they were in transition between the names. [5] [6] [7] The album was produced by The Boys Next Door, Tony Cohen, and Keith Glass; it was recorded with Cohen engineering at Richmond Recorders Studios in Melbourne from July 1979 to February 1980. [8]

Contents

The album differs from the new-wave pop-punk style of their debut Door, Door (released the year earlier), moving towards the dark and chaotic post-punk style they would later become known for as The Birthday Party. [6]

The album in its entirety has been reissued on CD as part of the Hee Haw compilation along with the Hee Haw EP . Two of the album's songs, "The Red Clock" and "The Hair Shirt" were originally included on the Hee Haw EP, released in 1979.

Recording

Tracy Pew was absent from the recording session for "Mr. Clarinet", so he recorded the bass later.

Engineer Tony Cohen said Richmond Recorders was a "non-reverberant, acoustically dead" design, forcing him and the band to experiment to get interesting sounds. He said, "On "The Hair Shirt", Nick sang through a telephone. He wanted a screechy voice underneath his lead vocal. Rowland always wanted more treble on his guitar, so I bought in sheets of corrugated iron and made a tunnel covering his amp." [9]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Nick Cave, except where noted.

No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Mr. Clarinet" 3:43
2."Hats on Wrong" 2:47
3."The Hair Shirt" 4:04
4."Guilt Parade"Rowland S. Howard2:46
5."Riddle House"Rowland S. Howard2:47
6."The Friend Catcher" 4:21
7."Waving My Arms" 2:17
8."The Red Clock"Rowland S. Howard2:49
9."Cat Man" Gene Vincent, Bill "Tex" Davis2:30
10."Happy Birthday"Nick Cave, Rowland S. Howard, Mick Harvey3:59
Total length:32:00

References

  1. ↑ Dalziell, Tanya; Welberry, Karen (13 May 2016). Cultural Seeds: Essays on the Work of Nick Cave. Routledge. ISBN   9781317156253.
  2. ↑ AllMusic review
  3. ↑ Larkin, Colin (27 May 2011). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Omnibus Press. ISBN   9780857125958.
  4. ↑ The Rolling Stone Album Guide. Random House. 1992. pp. 59–60.
  5. ↑ Johnston, Ian (5 March 2020). Bad Seed: The Biography of Nick Cave. Little, Brown Book Group. ISBN   9780349144351.
  6. 1 2 "Birthday Party".
  7. ↑ Ian McFarlane (9 August 2004). "The Birthday Party". whammo.com.au/encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 9 August 2004.
  8. ↑ The Birthday Party (LP album). The Boys Next Door. Missing Link Records. 1980. Link 7.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  9. ↑ Tony Cohen with John Olson (2023). Half Deaf, Completely Mad. Black Inc. Books. p. 58. ISBN   978-1-74382-308-8.
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