Teenage Snuff Film

Twenty-four years is a long time to spend working up to a debut solo album, but Roland S. Howard follows his own wayward star.

Whether participating in the jagged juvenalia of Melbourne’s Boys Next Door, lending his trademark flicknife guitar to The Birthday Party, freelancing with Crime & The City Solution and Lydia Lunch or leading These Immortal Souls, Howard’s way has always been too crooked and contrary to be recorded by corporate satellites.

Teenage Snuff Film, featuring Mick Harvey on drums and Brian Hooper on bass, follows in the tradition of fellow Bad Seed affiliates such as Anita Lane and Barry Adamson, artists whom, for all their preoccupations with atmospheres and scores, also remain staunch advocates of The Song, hooked on classicists like Hazelwood and Gainsbourg.

Accordingly, this collection benefits from a disarming directness. Howard may speak in Dylan-esque riddles on tunes like ‘Dead Radio’ (which recalls his pal Lunch’s fixation with the late Romanian consumptive romantic EM Cioran) but it’s out of a jokerman’s natural love of the cryptic, a card-sharp keeping his hand in rather than making any great play of profundity.

The sounds are dishevelled but never disorganised: sheet-metal guitar (a stand off between Neil Young and Blixa Bargeld), depth-charged drums playing Spector-esque big beats, nails-on-blackboard strings. Titles like ‘Breakdown’ and ‘I Burnt Your Clothes’ are songs of love/hate dipped in absinthe, while ‘Silver Chain’ and ‘Undone’ utilise splendidly mangled folk forms.

Indeed, TSF frequently suggests a Gallic Johnny Thunders fronting the Triffids. There’s even a cover of Billy Idol’s ‘White Wedding’ remoulded as a ballad in 3/4 time. It works. Trust me, I’m a doctor.