Product Description
Having relocated, after one album, from their native Australia to England, The Birthday Party proved too much even for a post-punk London scene greedy for novelty. Led by drawn, gangling vocalist
Nick Cave and addled, introspective guitarist Roland S. Howard, they set about provoking their audience with a brutal mix of rabid psychobilly, country blues and an ear-splitting mess of near-industrial percussion.
Prayers On Fire (its title neatly capturing Cave's onstage persona--a hell-spawned and gothic Deep South preacherman) was as incendiary as the band's gigs. Though an aggravating shambles, it was hypnotically intense, featuring such deliberately barbarous live favourites as "Zoo Music Girl" and "Nick The Stripper", and also "King Ink", later the title of one of Cave's books. Poetic, violent and clearly drug fuelled, even today it explains the furore that led The Birthday Party to quickly move on to Berlin, then split altogether. --
Dominic Wills
CD Description
Nick Cave is widely acknowledged as one of our most mature songwriting talents these days, but there was a time when heseemed to be the most unhinged soul in Christendom. The Birthday Party's performances, whether in the studio or on stage, were always compelling, and they left behind no more powerful document than this shattering record. PRAYERS ON FIRE, an intense, disquieting effort, was their first international release after relocating to London from Australia. While the violence of the group's urban rockabilly rumbles underneath, often to no obvious linear structure, Cave's lyrics are informed, acute, but utterly unyielding and savage. Check the no-compromise ferocity of "Nick The Stripper" and "King Ink", still among his best songs.