DEEP CuTs

Nigel Pulsford’s new column on hidden-gem guitar albums

The Birthday Party The Bad Seed EP Mute (1983) Nick Cave arrived in London with the Birthday Party from Melbourne, Australia in 1980, expecting a welcoming, vibrant music scene. Wrong city, wrong time! Frustrated, they moved to Berlin in 1982 and found what they had been looking for. Mick Harvey moved from guitar to drums, with this new, more focused line-up and producing a lean, taut foil for Cave’s wretched vocals. They unleashed the magnificent Bad

Seed EP in 1983. More refined sonically than predecessor Junkyard, it perfectly illustrated the fractured beauty of guitarist Rowland Howard’s approach. Employing a fraction of the technique he possessed, Rowland stabbed, provoked, teased and tugged at the music, creating nightmarish squalls and ragged bluesy interjections, warped by the use of a vibrato arm and soaked in spring reverb. An MXR EQ pedal maxed out and a Blue Box or Distortion+ employed when necessary. Shards of treble-soaked Fender Jaguar punctuated perfectly the dysfunctional nature of the words. He is the perfect post-punk guitar player, with his playing scratching at the underbelly of the city at night. [NP]

“Rowland Howard employed only a fraction of his technique…”