It was Nick Cave‘s 60th birthday last week and I have been listening to old records from The Birthday Party like ‘Junkyard’ over the last few days. They are possessed with an intensity and urgency that despite his vastly impressive back catalogue, Cave never quite recaptured.
All of which brings me to the return of The Bridport Dagger with ‘Wolves‘, recorded in Brixton and unleashed on an unsuspecting world on the 13th of October. It’s their first release in more years than I care to remember, but I’ve always been a fan. It simmers with a marvellous dark horror comparable with those early Birthday Party records. The intro’s cavalcade of tremulous guitars and thunderous drumming is the equivalent of having a herd of horses trampling you underfoot. Frontman Jason Idnani-Powdrill trembles and howls with the terror of a man who has seen far too much and is now knocking at your door, inhabited with the feverish intensity of a blast furnace. This is deliciously cinematic, evocative music with the underbelly of twitching noirish melodrama. If it’s the sound of the impending apocalypse I say come, Armageddon, come.
The Bridport Dagger recently performed in an echo chamber under the River Thames and supplied sound design for a seven-day immersive play in Berlin. The band will soon be heading back to the studio in November to record songs for their debut album.
Forthcoming live dates below:
8th October: Twin Peaks UK Festival, London
12th October: Half Moon Putney, London
13th October: The Lexington (with the Flaming Stars and Get Your Gun), London
4th November: Paper Dress vintage 4th Birthday Party, London
16th November: Nambucca, Some Weird Sin, London
