Customer Reviews

Junkyard

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Birthday party, to put it vulgarly, could rip off anyone's face and chew on their brains then, now and tomorrow as well. The Party emerged from the post punk movement that also spawned Joy Division, Bauhaus, The Cure and Christian Death, and which would later be called Goth. (Deathrock in the states) The Birthday Party, however would prove to be one of the most extreme and "hardcore" of lot. While Joy Division and The Cure prefered melancholy and gloom, and Bauhaus and Christian Death - boho artsiness, Nick Cave and his fellow loons gave us a bastard hybrid of garage rock, punk, rockabilly, blues and a bit of lounge as well. The thing that really set them apart was the all out fury and abandon found in their music. Even the fastest and loudest Thrash Metal and Hardcore Punk bands could never dream of creating the atmosphere of raw, unadulterated anger, rage, and tension found on this album. It's almost murderous. Very fitting for songs like Six Inch Gold Blade and Dead Joe. (Probably the greatest Death Rock song ever recorded) One has to wonder what Nick Cave was doing while recording the vocals. Torturing himself with a branding iron maybe? The production values on this recording are almost non-exsistant. The sound is hollow. Low bass end, and ear piercing high end. No middle tone. The vocals sound like they were recorded in a bathroom, the guitar sounds out of tune, and the drums sound... well... broken! But all of these shortcomings add to the experimental nature of this album. And the lyrics... anyone familiar with Nick Cave can expect only some of his best here. Strange characters in ridiculous situations, tons of poetic metaphors and of course Death and Murder. A bit of b-movie horror with the Goth Anthem Release The Bats as well. Essential listening to anyone who thinks today's popular poseur artists are "extreme."

The early years of Nick Cave when he had some edge and music muscle to back it up. So much tension on the album that you think the band is going to disintegrate at any moment. This was when the band was still in it's post Stooges- Sex Pistols primtive style, down an dirty punk rock before graduating to the sleek and more refined style of lounge rock with Nick Cave crooning gothic style songs in the mould of Tom Waits.

Highly recommended!

love is a light word to use in expressing how i like this cd ever song a masterpeice though some songs can get irriating you will go back to them and love them regard less some highlights would be SHE'S HIT, HAMLET POW POW, SEVERAL SINS, BIG JESUS TRASH CAN, KEWPIE DOLL, JUNKYARD AND RELEASE THE BATS. SHE'HIT the musics slow with a thumping bass line and cybmals that crash out of no where and nick cave sounding like a demonic reporter.HAMLET POW POW could send you into a frenzy with a looping bass lineand tons of guitar rackets and cave shrieking about a murder. SEVERAL SINS is good relaxing (for them) song that sounds really bluesy.BIG JESUS TRASH CAN has thee funniest lyrics ever about the oil crisis (gee aren't we in the same kind of situation).KEWPIE DOLL sounds like no wave mixed with thrashabilly with some rather misogynist lyrics.JUNKYARD is the best song to me with that distorted whammy bar intro to that bass and drum beat that sonuds so evil and untamed then when the chorus comes around you can imagine cave bouncing his head back and forth to the beat before screaming at the top of lungs IT WILL SEND SHIVERS UP YOUR SPINE. RELEASE THE BATS sounds very jazzy and again some more misogynist lyrics from nick cave. [....]

With Junkyard we find ourselves right in the middle of the Birthday Party story (well, give or take a few years....) Yes, this is a work of genius, no doubt about it. From the first track, "Blast Off," it's clear that we're dealing with a very different sort of band, one whose work was one-of-a-kind and which therefore can't be described. Think of it as the sound of darkness, or maybe as a sort of 'stepping stone' to the slightly more pop (but by no means more upbeat) Nick Cave that created "From Her To Eternity." Or think of it as a testament to that lost and sadly underrated rhythm section at the back of every band, always there, punching out beats for the rest of the band to work around. Whatever gets you to buy this classic bit of plastic, and listen to it over and over, just find a reason, shell some money together, and BUY IT!!!!! I cannot say it any more simply than that.

This is one of the greatest records ever, if your taste runs toward the dark side of (in)human experience. "Dead Joe" is a classic romp of decayed junkie nihilism, and "Hamlet (Pow Pow Pow)" is a gothic tour de force, a precursor of the types of songs Cave went on to do with the Bad Seeds. Throw in the bonus track "Release the Bats", and you've got a near perfect album.

I'm new to the world of Nick Cave. I got into his "Bad Seeds" stuff recently, because I remember seeing him at Lollapalooza in 1994, under a tent reciting some crazy poetry. For years I've been meaning to pick up some of his music, and I'm finally doing it. I noticed that Henry Rollins' record label re-issued this CD and thought I'd give it a shot. The closest comparison that I can think of for this CD is some sort of middle ground between The Stooges and The Cramps. It sounds very crazy, fun, and uninhibited. If you like aggressive, wild noise experimentation, then this is a CD for you. As a warning, the sound is very raw, like some of the older 80's punk like old Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, or Husker Du. I really like that "garage" sound, but if you're not into that kind of thing then you should avoid this....
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....No you souldn't. This is really great music!! Treat your ears to something nice and get this CD!

Long day at work? Pop this one in, lean back, and let the unwinding begin...
Nick Cave and the lot were some of the mellowest figures in the punk scene those days. This one's way up there with the likes of Kenny G as far as I'm concerned.

The Birthday Party-Junk Yard ****

To be blunt, The Birthday Party really doesn't fit into any genre, you can't pigeon hole the guys. Born out of the post punk era, but also the new wave, and also the Gothic wow is me via the Cure and Bauhaus, with just a splash of hardcore before it was actually called that The Birthday Party was Lucifer's favorite rock n' roll boyfriend Nick Cave's introduction to the world. What a great one.

To simply choose between the Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds would be impossible. This was the much younger, much more angry, far less poetic Nick Cave.

Junk Yard is possibly the groups greatest achievement. Aside from their brilliant live albums this takes the cake. In a nut shell, if you were to place this in your record collection it would destroy just about every other album in the lot, an along side any other album from 1982, they all sound dull.

Tracks like 'Dead Joe' 'Blast Off' and the closer 'Release The Bats' are both haunting and overpowering at the same time. Cave's growl mixed with the music of one of the greatest backing bands in history make for one of best albums of the 1980's and of all time.

Eventually Birthday Party would break and Cave would move to Germany and form The Bad Seeds, but it is Junk Yard that still to this day remains Caves most honest and unmerciful work.

The Birthday Party were an angry, spiteful band. After recording bluesy, experimental punkish dirges on their first album, they birthed Junkyard into the world. As important as it is, Junkyard is a hard album to really like. As stated before, the production values are non-existent. Junkyard is a nightmare... not in some elegant Gothic way, but in a very Lo Fi anti-music, piss-off the fans kind of way.

For one thing, throughout Junkyard the guitars sound all wrong. Very often in editorial reviews hard guitar riffs are described as "metallic" and sometimes critics wax poetic, describing a particularly punishing guitar as being "strung with barbed wire." Here, however, the guitar sound is so tinny and metallic and pitched so high that those cliched descriptions actually apply... it's a horrid squealing sound, especially on songs like Hamlet(Pow Pow Pow) where the guitars actually blend with brass horns. Disconcerting is the only way to describe it. Nick Cave's powerful voice, the focal point of the band, is a mostly yammering, roaring, snarling, brainless mess. The lyrics, (example: "yack..yack...yackyackyack yack goes junkface") are rambing, drug addled nonsense. Nonsense! There is scarcely a hint of melody to be found anywhere on the album. The songs rhythms are unconventional. You like music catchy? Move aside, grandma.

The only thing, and I mean ONLY thing grounding these "songs" is the bass, played by the incredible gyrating showman Tracy Pew. If you pay attention to the low end, the rumbling bass provides the arresting appeal of songs like the title track... especially its cataclysmic ending. Songs like "She's hit" "Blast off!" and "Dead Joe" rumble powerfully, but I have to admit, none of them are particularly appealing in any musical sense. "Release the Bats," perhaps the band's most famous single, as well as the best produced track on the cd release, was a song the band conceived of as a humorous send up of the Goths that seemed to follow them.

So why do I like this? This album is startlingly original. It's offensive, confrontational and mean. The songs vaguely describe drug addiction, murder and depravity in poetic, open and creative ways. For the right kind of listener, this is downright inspiring. This isn't some talentless band hacking together "shocking" music for attention, this is a highly disciplined, literate band (try listening to a 17 year old Nick Cave singing "Shivers" and then tell me these guys can't play classically) composing trashy punk that radiates contempt for their own peers, audience, and genre... it's a band being themselves, destroying everything and yet remaining musicians. I enjoy this record, and I return to it again and again, because it somehow just feels right, somehow. As ugly and inaccessible as it is, it makes me proud of them. Nick Cave and Tracy Pew, Rolland Howard and Mick Harvey have carved their legacy into the music of today. This fact is not debatable. The Birthday Party broke up soon after I was born, and yet bands as recent as The Horrors (these old-school guys are younger than I am!) reflect their influence. I admire the hell out of the Birthday Party. Their music is brutal, vicious and uncompromising. I can't defend their stuff very well to those who don't get it, but man... I love it.

This Birthday Party's third and most notoir album literaly "Blasts off" with total noise, psychotic drums and screaming guitar terror; but then again, it's an LP that is made by a no-holds-barred punk act that's more of a crazed, insane lost-in-the-jungle war ensemble on the loose.

The songs TBP produces can be described best as "well structured chaos". It's fullblown punky mess, but with a mind behind it. Songs like "Six inch gold blade" and "Kwepie doll" are thunder without much point and probably will do nice on stage during cheap, messy, smokey, claustrophobic late night gigs.

"Dead Joe" and "Dead Joe (2nd version)" tell about a car crash and the songs sound just like one. "Hamlet (Pow pow pow)" takes on the graveyard scene from Shakespeare's legendary theatre play and "Several sins" stands out as a kind of eerie but beautiful "punk ballad".

The title track "Junkyard" is maybe the best song TBP ever cried out, with sneering guitars, up and down tempo, and singer Cave's dark voice, sometimes lowkey, sometimes highpitched screaming, perfectly in place. "Release the bats" is more of the same well-formulated chaos but with a catchy base drum by Mick Harvey that's really on a role.

I confess that TBP's first to albums "Hee-haw" and "Prayers on fire" didn't really got to me. Fifty percent of "Junkyard" did in a main way, just as the following (and last) TBP album "Mutiny / The Bad Seed" did.

In some ways, even more. TBP was really growing and maturing (which is really some kind of paradox: I always felt that punk music was mainly created to rage against maturity and the world of oppressing adults) and one would be curious what should have become of this nasty little Party had they not fall apart soon after release of "Mutiny / The Bad Seed".