Eclipsed by the stellar career of his former Birthday Party cohort Nick Cave and debilitated by two decades of heroin use and only sporadic visits to the recording studio, ROWLAND S. HOWARD had largely been forgotten outside of his sphere of influence on the Australian music scene and his native Melbourne.
Nonetheless, I read with great sadness of Howard's passing (aged 50) from liver cancer on December 30th last. This haunted, wraithlike little guy's strange appearance had been one of the things that first drew me to The Birthday Party when they crashed on to the scene with their seminal 'Prayers on Fire' album in 1981 and the manic, feedback-drenched quality of Howard's guitar playing was every bit as important as Cave's psychotic charisma in winning me over to their cause early on. Rowland would later feature in Crime & The City Solution and later lead the under-rated These Immortal Souls (with the equally overlooked Epic Soundtracks) but it had been ten years since his debut solo album, 1999's criminally-ignored 'Teenage Snuff Film'.
Ironically, when I first heard of Howard's demise, I wrongly assumed it would be from a heroin overdose, but he'd apparently finally got clear of that a couple of years before. Instead, his cancer diagnosis ensured that recording of a new album would have to a brisk affair and completed quickly. Thus, 'Pop Crimes' found Howard locked into an ideal trio format with sympathetic support from long-time collaborators, ex-Bad Seed/ Birthday Party mainstay Mick Harvey (drums, organ) and bassist JP Shilo from The Hungry Ghosts who Howard had previously produced.
And, while it's enormously sad to think he couldn't be around the savour it properly, 'Pop Crimes' is arguably a career best, never mind an epitaph to be proud of. The aura of darkness does surround several of the key tracks, but even allowing for that, 'Pop Crimes' is a compelling listen and certainly not something you have to slog through.
Indeed, it's often wholly exhilarating. The album opens with its' most playful moment, courtesy of the sultry '(I Know) A Girl Called Johnny', a duet with Melbourne band HTRK's Jonnine Standish. Over a deceptively sweet backdrop of vibrato guitars and whirring, B-movie organ, Howard and Standish trade lustful lines (“she's my narcotic lollipop”, “In my silver dress, I'm a disastress”) and the effect is sexy and surreal with more than an undertone of David Lynch. It also proves that while Howard was hardly the world's greatest singer, his nicotine-stained croon worked well in such circumstances.
Great though '...Johnny' is, it's not really representative of the album's overall sound. Far more typical are tracks like 'Shut Me Down' and 'Wayward Man'. It would be naïve to think that either are less than autobiographical, though the way the latter especially veers from eleventh-hour nihilism (“I do all my best thinking unconscious on the floor”) to guilt and resignation (“I'm the fly in the ointment, I'm your constant disappointment”) and presents us with a strange mixture of tenderness and destruction is never less than compelling.
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The one less-than essential moment is an unlikely and rather leaden cover of Talk Talk's 'Life's What You Make It'. It's OK and does feature some typically jarring bursts of Howard guitar dissonance, but compared to the two tracks coming in its' wake – the album's title track and an ominous version of Townes Van Zandt's 'Nothin'' – it's pedestrian stuff. 'Pop Crimes' itself, though, is an absolute belter. Driven by a bassline perpetually circling like a ravenous vulture and a slow-fever Harvey drum track, it provokes one of Howard's most charismatic vocals, some wonderfully serrated guitar and a lyric (“I guess I won't see you tomorrow on this, our planet of perpetual sorrow”) which faces eternity with remarkable grace and dignity.
The Van Zandt cover, meanwhile, is very much Howard's Johnny Cash moment. Proffering an ironic lyric (“if you see my friends, tell 'em I'm fine, I ain't using nothing”) it renders an already bleak song of leaving a darker shade of black. At the other end of the spectrum, 'Ave Maria' is a surprisingly tender, Velvets-style ballad, where love may have gone cold, but the restraint of the band's performance is gracious and admirable. As if he senses the need to remind us he was always a rock'n'roller first and foremost, Howard then signs off with the epic 'Golden Age of Bloodshed': an epic mix of powerchords and discord which walks with sharpened sticks and retribution in mind, yet leaves you feeling strangely exhilarated and cleansed.
'Pop Crimes', then, is a wonderful testament to the creative powers of a woefully neglected figure who despised the inevitable epithet 'cult figure'. It's hugely emotional stuff and sometimes flawed, but never less than human and quite frequently magnificent for all that. Goodbye all too soon Mr. Howard. RIP.
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