Led by guitarist Rowland S. Howard of
the Birthday Party,
These Immortal Souls wander through the haze of smoky cabarets and faded photos worn at the edges on their full-length debut,
Get Lost (Don't Lie). Throughout this bleak and paranoid midnight journey, the band plays dark marches ("Marry Me [Lie! Lie!]" and "Hide"); Velvet Underground-inspired, repetitive, piano rock ("Hey! Little Child"); and atmospheric Doors-meets-
Bowie somber rock & roll ("These Immortal Souls"). They even cover the song "Hey! Little Child" by
Big Star power pop genius
Alex Chilton. This monumental album by dark poets of the soul -- Rowland S. Howard,
Genevieve McGuckin,
Harry Howard, and
Epic Soundtracks (founder of the
Swell Maps who, sadly, was found dead in 1997) -- draws from sources such as
Leonard Cohen,
the Rolling Stones, and even
Joy Division while completely avoiding the trappings of the goth genre. Simultaneously rocking, strangely beautiful, and scary, this album foreshadowed the sound of bands to come over a decade later, like
Three Mile Pilot,
the Black Heart Procession, Slaves, and
Pleasure Forever.
These Immortal Souls made up a short, but brilliant branch of
the Birthday Party lineage that wrongly goes far less noticed than
the Bad Seeds.
–
Charles Spano, Rovi