Crime & The City Solution: The Killer

The Crime & The City Solution story is one the most intriguing artistic endeavours to originate from the Australian shores.

Formed in Sydney in the late 1970s before a stint in Melbourne, the band largely co-existed, firstly alongside with The Birthday Party, then in Berlin alongside Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (a certain Mick Harvey flitting between both projects). Since the band’s dominance throughout the 1980s, Crime & The City Solution mainstays Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams have proven to be more nomadic souls than their fellow antipodean counterparts.

As the years have gone by, the pair have moved constantly, with destinations not limited to Berlin, Detroit and Papua New Guinea under their belt. Having been back in Melbourne during the lockdown period, Bonney and Adams have seemingly gone full circle, back to the (pardon the pun) scene of the crime with the second Berlin manifestation of the band.

Crime & The City Solution are a band whose mark should be far more prominent than it is. From the urgent rambling swamp rock of their debut release, Room of Lights (1986), the vanguard in the Crime canon, Shine followed two years later. Then there was the southern gothic-inspired The Bride Ship which arrived less than 12 months after Shine, and through to the atmospheric majesty of their underappreciated 1990 dispatch Paradise Discotheque, Crime and The City Solution were the purveyors of some of the most exciting outlier blues-punk ever made.

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Even their comeback long-awaited comeback release, 2013’s American Twilight, which featured an all-star cast including Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten, Dirty Three’s Jim White and Wovenhand’s David Eugene Edwards had its moments. But, in true fashion, Bonney and Adams weren’t ones to remain in one place for too long, and following a world tour of American Twilight, little has been mentioned of Crime for the best part of a decade.

That is aside from our lengthy discussion with Bonney during lockdown, where he suggested that new music was in the offing, and just under two years later we are gifted with the band’s next chapter, The Killer.

The latest incarnation of the band sees Bonney and Adams joined by Frederic Lyenn (piano, bass, synth), Donald Baldie (guitar), Georgio Valentino (synth, guitar), Chris Hughes (drums, percussion) and Joshua Murphy (piano, guitar). The Killer also marks a first as Bonney and Adams enlist outside ears; producer Martin J. Fiedler – the source behind the Josh T. Pearson masterpiece, Last of the Country Gentlemen. Prior to this knowledge, and it makes sense. There are similar through lines where Bonney and Pearson’s songwriting is concerned, namely the sheer emotional intensity both artists’ capture.

And that’s the hallmark characteristic of The Killer. Originally earmarked as PhD surrounding the decision making in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the ideas quickly formed into an album. In the press notes ahead of its release, Bonney explained the “normalcy that exists within what we would consider to be extraordinary situations.” There’s perhaps no better person to frame these images of conflict and chaos than Bonney.

Unlike many who like to commentate on such issues from an ivory tower, the fact that Bonney has spent a lot of time in so many diverse and deprived communities throughout the world delivering aid programmes, including his time recently in the Ukraine, these experiences not only form the basis of The Killer, but also project an unadorned reality.

Starting with Rivers of Blood where Bonney begins with a croon from the abyss. (“My love turns rivers to blood / And flowers into blackened buds / But I am the one who will love you”.) It’s the best opening line of a song since I can remember. A song so good that words simply don’t do it justice, and undoubtedly Crime’s finest moment conceived from the vaults. It reaches a point where you feel they’ve peaked too early, as Bonney and Adams serenade us with gorgeous vignettes that are rich with emotional force. (“Like the sound of snow falling down.”) Indeed.

The waves of sorrow continue to lap up to the shore on Hurt You, Hurt Me. A fractured folk dirge from the vestiges. (“I look into your dark grey eyes/ Watch the world as it subsides”.)

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River of God is next, and it’s vintage Crime. The kind of slow-motion bourgeoning blues that sinks deep into the bones. Whilst perhaps featuring earlier depending on how one interprets it, to me at least, this feels like the start of a recurring character throughout The Killer; a farmer who harnesses and works alongside violent natural forces as opposed to controlling them. (“I surrender to the darkness”.)

While the synth-laden Brave Hearted Woman echoes the bombastic moments of Paradise Discotheque, the sing-speak centrepiece that is Killer recounts the natural force littered with new-era ’ Neubauten sonics (“Please don’t kill me, I feel your pain”). In many ways, it not only underpins The Killer, but foundations of the Crime & The City Solution citadel.

Then there’s Witness, which sees Bonney take centre stage in a piano-led ballad that Adams later wades in on with a series of sullen strings that stir the embers. The melody, steeped in the gospel blues that we often associate with Jason Pierce (“I see the light and it’s shining through”.)

On the crestfallen closer, Peace in My Time, Bonney asks the toughest question of all, “Will there be peace in my time?”. A song that feels like a snapshot of the turmoil that incessantly blights a world that grows more extreme by the day. As the protagonist submits to the storm and crumbles under its chaos, not only does Peace in My Time frame an immediate reality, but a future one, too. Will the carnage ever cease? The reality is, probably not.

With The Killer, Crime and The City Solution’s arrival is timely. Simon Bonney, the creative force that parts with the pertinent truths during a time where lies and obfuscation are the new normal. It’s another defining moment from a band that has given us many.  

The Killer is out Friday via Mute. Purchase from Bandcamp.