Crime And The City Solution was the band of singer Simon Bonney. Initially, it was a group of friends, but the arrival of guitarist Rowland Howard and drummer Mick Harvey, both former members of the Birthday Party, instantly raised its ambitions.

Indeed, the EP Dangling Man (Mute, 1985) unfolds in the vein of the gothic, possessed blues that had characterized the Birthday Party. On Dangling Man and At The Crossroads, only Cave’s apocalyptic lyrics are missing.

However, that was not Bonney’s true calling. The singer’s personality began to take shape on the EP Just South Of Heaven (Mute, 1985). The lineup was even more prestigious, thanks to the addition of Epic Soundtracks (formerly of Swell Maps) on drums, and the arrangements were more sophisticated, aided by Harvey’s keyboard work. The overall tone of the songs was that of a solemn, austere blues. From the fatal, apocalyptic atmosphere of Rose Blue to the dark, tribal feel of Coal Train, from the rarefied and shadowy Stolen And Stealing to the electric grit of Five Stone Walls, from the melodramatic and driving Trouble Come This Morning to the subdued, spectral Wailing Wall, the impression is that the band is attempting to create a chamber lied for a small rock ensemble. The supreme quality of this new genre is its ability to build chilling dramatic tension through alternating accompaniments that appear free-form but are always endowed with extraordinary cohesion and propelled by unsettling rhythms. It is one of the greatest and most authentic modern blues albums. Bonney and his collaborators were poised to challenge Nick Cave for the crown of Australian singer-songwriter supremacy.

The first true album, Room Of Lights (Mute, 1986), presented a band in excellent form, led by an increasingly charismatic singer. The gothic ballad Six Bells Chime, the blues sarabande with voodoo tribalism of Hey Sinkiller, the dark and martial piano spiritual of Brother Songs (reminiscent of the Velvet Underground’s Venus In Furs played in slow motion), and the other tracks excel in narrative technique, often (as in the barrelhouse crescendo of No Money No Honey) reminiscent of Jim Morrison’s histrionics, building the atmosphere and tensions of a thriller filtered through the neurosis of a heroin addict.
Sparse and hallucinatory instrumentation underscores stories of death and depravity, chanted through Simon Bonney’s emphatic gospel register (at times approaching the lysergic melismas of Tim Buckley). Metallic screeches, “sheet-metal” noises, and psychedelic reverbs from Howard’s guitar, along with Epic Soundtracks’ dark jungle polyrhythms, erect sinister and diseased harmonies over which a dying voice weaves desolation and silence.
The final deluge of Her Room Of Lights erupts into a wild voodoobilly track, complete with raucous, apocalyptic vocals and the driving pulse of the Velvet Underground. Crime imitates the Bad Seeds, with Bonney as a less demonic Cave; Teenage Jesus, with Bonney as a less hysterical Lunch; and Pere Ubu, with Bonney as a less surreal Thomas. Yet the primary reference remains The End, the ultimate gothic psychodrama in rock music.

Howard and Soundtracks, however, left Bonney to form the These Immortal Souls. Bonney once again became the undisputed master of Crime And The City Solution, and his blues-singer persona—halfway between Nick Cave and Jim Morrison—would be central to all subsequent albums.

Bonney decided to move to Berlin and enlisted Bronwyn Adams on violin, Alexander Hacke on guitar, Chrislo Haas on electronics, and Thomas Stern on bass (Hacke came from Einstürzende Neubauten and Haas from D.A.F.).

Inevitably, Bonney dominates with his sibylline "crooning" on the album Shine (Mute, 1988), a melodic and even relaxed work (at least compared to the previous records), far from the original Birthday Party template. The singer had become a master at sculpting the anguished blues of All Must Be Love or the tiptoeing serenade of Angel into nearly desert-like soundscapes, from which a violin lament, a guitar arpeggio, an organ toll, or a catatonic drumbeat occasionally emerge. In their whispered half-phrases, one can sense the profound spleen of Tim Buckley, and in their rapt crescendos, the chills of Velvet Underground trenodies are felt. This method of "soundscaping" reaches its peak on On Every Train, with a rhythm that gradually grows into a nightmarish vertigo, and a violin taking on the role of Cale’s viola in the Velvet Underground.
A touch more vehemence characterizes Hunter, making it hallucinatory in the style of Nick Cave (and imbued with its own metaphysical allegory), while the dreamlike atmosphere of Fray So Slow, with its distorted organ and intermittent noises, delves even deeper into the human psyche. The apex of tension and suspense is the apocalyptic confession of Steal To The Sea, which unites the hypnotic ecstasy of raga with the “sickly” progression of Venus In Furs, repeating in sameness yet always different until all energy is exhausted—a cathartic bath and spiritual palingenesis. This journey through Bonney’s existential agony closes with Home Is Far From Here, driven by a synthesizer that sounds like a falling drop, yet also modulates a melody steeped in infinite nostalgia (echoing the opening of Hunter).

Bride Ship (Mute, 1989) does not loosen its grip, but closes in on the harmonic core of their sound in an almost paranoid manner. Shadow Of No Man overflows with infinite nostalgia, which Bonney delivers like a fairy tale while Adams blankets it in celestial chords; Stone is as hard as the rock it describes; the dark parabola of Keepsake extinguishes all light. But the centerpiece of the album, and perhaps Bonney’s spiritual testament, is the three-movement suite The Bride Ship, whose first movement reaches spasmodic levels of suspense through a vaguely Indian crescendo reminiscent of Venus In Furs by the Velvet Underground.

Paradise Discotheque (Mute, 1990) retains the same melodrama and even accentuates the complexity of the arrangements and the philosophical depth of the lyrics. Well-directed by Harvey, the band proves to be superb arrangers and manipulators of stylistic motifs. The stylistic range is impressive, from I Have The Gun, inspired by the epic folk-rock of the Walkabouts, to Motherless Child, which resurrects the feverish cadence of Venus (Shocking Blue). Bonney, for his part, preaches more fervently than ever, but this album achieves a delicate balance between his commanding personality and the refined musicianship of the others. The Sly Persuaders is a Nick Cave-style “horror story,” yet reinforced with classical violins, rhythm and blues brass, and swinging rhythms. The ghostly atmosphere of The Dolphins And The Sharks relies on dissonant, out-of-tune piano, mournful violin laments, and indecipherable background noises. The Sun Before The Darkness, halfway between gypsy frenzy and Indian tablas, is composed of melodic fragments that float freely. The rhythms are always driving, martial, and solemn. Cave’s idea of metaphysical suspense is revisited here with a more “pop” approach that remains no less theatrical.
The band’s swan song is the long suite The Last Dictator, whose four movements (the first inspired by Jim Steinman’s pompous pop melodrama, the second featuring free-jazz clarinets and African tribal rhythms, the third midway between classical ballet and decadent cabaret, the fourth in a mood of apotheosis) even unveil “progressive” libidinal tendencies worthy of early Genesis and King Crimson.

After disbanding the group and moving to Los Angeles, Bonney gave free rein to his country ambitions on the album Forever (Mute, 1992), but in such a depressed and intimate manner that it inevitably recalls the name of Leonard Cohen (especially on Ravenswood).

Still largely acoustic, the concept album Everyman (Mute, 1996) is the work of a disciple of Gram Parsons, a conceptual fresco of the other side of the “American dream.” Songs like Don't Walk Away From Love and This Is What You Made Me remix half a century of Southern white music. The title track, structured in the vein of Red Headed Stranger, is an indirect tribute to Willie Nelson. The album’s theme is the pilgrimage of an unemployed man seeking work in rural America. His sufferings and temptations evoke, in some ways, the passion of Jesus.

A still-undiscovered figure, full of morbid pathos, Bonney has never made a misstep on a record and has written some of the most moving pages of the late ’80s.

Mick Harvey's One Man's Treasure (2005) and Two Of Diamonds (2007), were mostly devoted to covers, following soundtracks and a Serge Gainsbourg tribute. Sketches from the Book of the Dead (2011) was the first collection entirely composed by him (at the age of 50), but it didn't fare well at all: just too self-absorbed, too indifferent to the music, too verbose.