Door Ajar

 The Boys Next Door - Door, Door [5419706685 AUS 2020 24-Bit FLAC]

I have waited a long time to get hold of a vinyl copy of this album, I had to wait for one of the RSD 2020 drops to pick this up, in a 'limited' edition of 5000 on red vinyl. Warner Music Australia now claim the rights to Door, Door as they bought up Australia's biggest indie label, Mushroom Records who first released this album back in 1979.

To sound deliberately clichéd , this is an album of two halves, recorded over two sessions eight months apart in Melbourne. Side A is very much garage punk, more proto American in influence than the British variety -  I hear more Ramones and Television than anything anglophile. Side B is more art-wave - you notice the progression to the sound the band were to develop further in their next incarnation. I have always thought the track Shivers was extremely close to what that Nick Cave was to eventually embelish and was surprised to notice that the writing credit is given to Rowland Stuart Howard.

Anyway the rest is history, messrs Cave, Roland, Harvey, Pew and Calvert grabbed their working holiday visas, fled to London and forgot to go back to Melbourne.

A1 The Nightwatchman

A2 Brave Exhibitions

A3 Friends Of My World

A4 The Voice

A5 Roman Roman

A6 Somebody's Watching

B1 After A Fashion

B2 Dive Position

B3 I Mistake Myself

B4 Shivers