''Prayers on Fire'' is the debut studio album by Australian rock group The Birthday Party, which was released on 6 April 1981 on the Missing Link label in Australia, later licensed to the 4AD label. This was the band's first full-length release on an international record label and the first after changing the group's name from Boys Next Door to The Birthday Party. It was recorded at Armstrong's Audio Visual Studios in Melbourne and Richmond Recorders in the nearby suburb of

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, ...

, between December 1980 and January 1981.

Background

In February 1980 Melbourne-based new wave group, The Boys Next Door, changed their name to The Birthday Party. They consisted of the same lineup of

Phill Calvert Phillip Calvert (born 11 January 1958) is an Australian rock drummer and producer best known for his playing in the post-punk band The Birthday Party with Nick Cave. History At the private boys school Caulfield Grammar in the early 1970s Cal ...

on drums,

Nick Cave Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor. Known for his baritone voice and for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Ca ...

on vocals,

Mick Harvey Michael John Harvey (born 29 August 1958) is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, composer, arranger and record producer. A multi-instrumentalist, he is best known for his long-term collaborations with Nick Cave, with whom he formed The ...

on guitar,

Rowland S. Howard Rowland Stuart Howard (24 October 1959 – 30 December 2009) was an Australian rock musician, guitarist and songwriter, best known for his work with the post-punk group The Birthday Party and his subsequent solo career. Early life Rowland Stua ...

on guitar and

Tracy Pew Tracy Franklin Pew (19 December 1957 – 7 November 1986) was an Australian musician, and bassist for The Birthday Party. He was later a member of The Saints, and worked with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. As a member of the Birthday Party, Pe ...

on bass guitar. They relocated to London and soon signed with the 4AD label which issued the extended play, ''The Friend Catcher'' in the United Kingdom. In July, their Australian label, Missing Link Records, released "Mr Clarinet" from the EP as a single. In November Missing Link followed with a compilation album, '' The Birthday Party'' under the band names The Boys Next Door and The Birthday Party, which combined previously issued EP and singles tracks with some previously unreleased material. Also in November 1980, The Birthday Party returned to Australia and toured. According to Australian music historian,

Ian McFarlane Ian McFarlane (born 1959) is an Australian music journalist, music historian and author, whose best known publication is the '' Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop'' (1999), which was updated for a second edition in 2017. As a journalist ...

, "It was during this time that the band cemented its reputation as a peerless live act, with its omnipresent influence settling over the Melbourne scene". On 6 April 1981 they issued the album and followed in June with its lead single, "Nick the Stripper". The group returned to London. Members of Melbourne jazz rock band Equal Local contributed the brass section to "Nick the Stripper" –

tenor saxophonist The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...

Mick Hauser was mis-credited as Mick Hunter. Equal Local had formed in 1980 by Dean Richards on guitar, Philip Jackson on synthesisers, trumpet and rhythm generator, Melissa Webb on synthesiser and piano, Bryce Perrin on acoustic bass, and Hauser. Richards and Jackson were bandmates from post punk rockers,

Whirlywirld Whirlywirld were an Australian post-punk band led by Ollie Olsen in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the first of his musical collaborations with drummer John Murphy. They played in Melbourne and Sydney and were supporters of the Melbourne ...

and contemporaries of The Boys Next Door. Equal Local disbanded in early 1982.

Composition and recording

In Melbourne, in December 1980 and January 1981, they joined engineer and producer,

Tony Cohen Anthony Lawrence Cohen (4 June 19572 August 2017) was an Australian music record producer and sound engineer. He worked with Nick Cave's groups the Birthday Party, and then the Bad Seeds from 1979 to 2001. In mid-1986 he had followed Cave t ...

, in Armstrong's Audio Visual Studios (A.A.V. Studio 2) and Richmond Recorders, to record their tracks. Music journalist,

Toby Creswell Toby Creswell (born 21 May 1955) is an Australian music journalist and pop-culture writer. He was editor of ''Rolling Stone'' (Australia) and a founding editor of ''Juice''. In 1986, he co-wrote, with Martin Fabinyi, his first book, ''Too Much ...

, noted that the band "struggled with creating their own identity some of them also began indulging an appetite for alcohol and heroin". Cave was embarrassed by "Zoo Music Girl" but noted "we were digging for something and we kind of just found it with some songs" and cited "King Ink" as an example of "a certain kind of sound that we wanted to work with on records after that". Eight of the eleven tracks on ''Prayers on Fire'' were written or co-written by Cave, " twas a kind of reaction to the major disappointments we felt when we went to England... ebegan to see a vision and I don't think we were positively influenced ... we didn't want to be like the English New Wave pop groups of the time". Pew observed " tstinks, quite honestly ... The engineer slept through the entire session for a start".

Reception

About.com Dotdash Meredith (formerly About.com) is an American digital media company based in New York City. The company publishes online articles and videos about various subjects across categories including health, home, food, finance, tech, beauty, ...

's Anthony Carew felt ''Prayers on Fire'' was able to "capture the qualities of their infamous live-shows on record ... the evocatively-produced set dared dress key cuts in blaring brass; giving a sense of perverted-cabaret to their mordant racket, turning Cave from nihilist, self-destructive savant to theatrical, flamboyant showman".

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

's Greg Maurer found "a fascination with the dark, (self-)destructive side of religion is more than evident in his later work... While there might not be any of the explicit Biblical imagery on

he album He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

that Cave would later ejaculate, the title ... is apt". Ian McFarlane stated it showed the band was "irrevocably and unashamedly changing for the better, being more aggressive than anything they had ever recorded". SoundStageDirect described it as "a creepy carnival of tribal rhythms, wonky discordance and garbled surrealism". Music critic Ed St John summarised, "this is an expression which ebbs out beyond the confines of proficiently played music ... tis akin to watching a film of

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...

painting or listening to

Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Under ...

in full alcoholic flight". The track "Ho-Ho" is featured in the 2004 German film, '' Head-On''.

Accolades

Track listing

Personnel

;The Birthday Party members *

–

lead vocals The lead vocalist in popular music is typically the member of a group or band whose voice is the most prominent melody in a performance where multiple voices may be heard. The lead singer sets their voice against the accompaniment parts of t ...

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

(track 7),

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...

(track 9),

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

(track 11) *

–

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

, backing vocals, lead vocals (track 5), saxophone (track 11) *

– organ, piano, guitar, snare drum (track 7), *

–

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

(track 8),

double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...

(track 9) *

– drums ;Equal Local members on "Nick the Stripper" * Phillip Jackson –

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

* Mick Hauser –

tenor saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...

(incorrectly credited as "Mick Hunter") * Stephen Ewart –

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...

;Recording details * Producer –

, The Birthday Party * Engineer – Tony Cohen * Studios – Armstrong's Audio Visual Studios (tracks 1–5, 7–9, 12–13), Richmond Recorders (tracks 6, 10, 11) **Mixing studios – Armstrong's Audio Visual Studios (tracks 6, 10, 11) ;Art work *Photography – Jenny,

Polly Borland Polly Borland (born 1959) is an Australian photographer who formerly resided in England from 1989 to 2011, and now lives in Los Angeles, United States. She is known both for her editorial portraits and for her work as a photographic artist. Bi ...

, Evan English (cover photo)

Chart positions

References

;General * Note: Archived n-linecopy has limited functionality ;Specific

External links

The Birthday Party lyrics
fro
Nick Cave Online
{{Authority control 1981 albums The Birthday Party (band) albums Albums produced by Tony Cohen 4AD albums Virgin Records albums Shock Records albums 2.13.61 albums Buddah Records albums