Even if tonight’s soiree has been moved from Manchester’s Night & Day Café to the cosier climes of Salford’s Eagle Inn, a night with Crime & The City Solution matches the excitement it suggests on paper.
The Eagle Inn is like a room within a room. Rectangular shaped from the ceiling down with nooks and crannies from top to bottom (the most intriguing, a door on the second floor that could very well lead to a different world), it’s a beautiful space for the 20-plus in attendance to usher in Australia’s forgotten heroes in Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams.
Joshua Murphy starts off the night with the kind of hushed doom-laden folk where things are felt before they are heard. A key player on Crime & The City Solution’s 2023 marvel, The Killer, tonight Murphy dispenses cuts from his 2022 Lowlands EP, led by the excellent The Killing Floor and Littered With Ghosts. His gentle brushes across the strings and atmospheric backing tracks, cutting through the quiet of the night with a haunting intensity that reaches similar frontiers that Michael Plater has explored during this decade.
A performance that has the audience fully engaged, it sets the tone for the rest of the evening. Shortly after, the beautifully bedraggled Bonney makes his way to the stage, finding a quiet corner to gather his thoughts before the performance begins. It’s an interesting juxtaposition; unburdened by any green room tropes one would associate with someone of his stature, this attitude feeds into the stripped back nature of the night.
Almost teleporting himself from another world, suddenly he jumps from the chair and feverishly greets the audience. Flanked Adams and Murphy, Bonney gets straight to work with The Killer’s wonderful opening broken ballad, Rivers of Blood. Launching into the song with fresh conviction, Bonney delivers it with the kind of force you’d expect to match a full band and not a bare bones version of it. It’s the overriding theme tonight.
Free Spirit: In Conversation with Crime & The City Solution’s Simon Bonney
So too is the in-between-song patter. As boundless as The Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis, it’s pure coincide that Bonney’s new look mirrors his fellow countryman, now untethered from the life as a civil servant, which has brought about the change from his customary “short, back and sides” to his nomadic “Willie Nelson” guise.
Adams adds her own flavour, too. Alongside her dynamic performance on violin, so animated and comedic as she trades stories of past endeavours, it’s yet another juxtaposition from the darkness that envelopes Crime & The City Solution’s songs. And on that front, River of God and Brave Hearted Woman (the latter in which Bonney dedicates to Adams) underline Murphy’s efforts to the cause. A secret weapon in the band’s arsenal, his velvety backing vocals expose new emotional depths.
Then there’s The Bride Ship and The Last Dictator II. Split apart and re-contextualised with avant-garde-inspired vigour, Adams flails and scratches at her violin, creating new sonic patterns for Bonney to negotiate before the trio move back to current times with The Witness and Peace In My Time. It continues The Killer-heavy themes tonight, which are welcomed; the album, criminally overlooked from most quarters in what was one of 2023’s finest releases. Seeing each song shaped into new forms reveals even more layers to them.
Including the set’s closing song, Killer. As Bonney recounts inspiration behind song, it’s the evening’s most harrowing moment, crystallising the non-existence of liberal democracy that many in far less privileged positions are faced with every single day.
It’s an evening that’s hard to believe just happened. Crime & The City Solution, plying their trade in the back of a pub with less than 30 punters in the kind of space designed for the best night of your life. And in their equally intimate manifestation, Crime & The Solution deliver something that just about meets these lofty expectations.
