The Birthday Party
Studio album by
The Boys Next Door / The Birthday Party
ReleasedNovember 1980
RecordedJuly 1979, January–February 1980
StudioRichmond Recorders, Melbourne
GenrePost-punk
Length32:00
LabelMissing Link Records[1]
CBS Records
4AD
ProducerThe 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
1982 Re-issue cover
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[2]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music[3]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[4]

The Birthday Party is a 1980 album by Australian rock band The Boys Next Door (later reissued under the band name The Birthday Party).[5][6] 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.[7]

The album was vastly different 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] This album was both the final album by The Boys Next Door and the first full-length release by The Birthday Party. In its original release, it was credited to both,[citation needed] but on its first reissue, it was credited to The Birthday Party.

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."[8]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Nick Cave, unless otherwise 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

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. ^ a b "Birthday Party".
  7. ^ 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)
  8. ^ 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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