Saturday 13 January 2018

No. 38 The Birthday Party - The Friend Catcher

OK, so it's been far too long since I've done one of these. It's EARLY January, the weather is foul and the kids are deeply involved in their iPads, so this is seems like a good opportunity to add another post.

And what a single to return on. I picked this up as a teenager in Plymouth, I knew of the Birthday Party but didn't know any of their music, so this was a bit of a gamble. If memory serves it was, even in 1985, a fairly collectable single, seeing as it was a fairly early 4AD release (AD 12), but because the sleeve was pretty battered, it was a fairly cheap buy. Thirty five years later it still sounds remarkable; the song opens with a 30 second blast of howling feedback, which reappears throughout the song and returns as it fades into blackness. It also contains one of the finest guitar riffs of any Birthday Party song, or indeed any goth track. Cave is also on fine form, delivering a typically theatrical performance.

You also get not one but two decent b-sides, the Roland S. Howard penned Waving My Arms and a cover of Gene Vincent's Catman; here's the original for a compare/contrast moment.