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From Mute Liberation Technologies.


The allure of These Immortal Souls lies in their evasiveness. Two albums, sporadic tour dates and no certainties inbetween, only the lingering notes of a keyboard carousel, cut through with swathes of wild guitar and a voice as loaded as gunsmoke. Hey, some people are just too cool to be mortal.

The band formed in 1987, after singer/guitarist Rowland S. Howard, bassist Harry Howard and drummer Epic Soundtracks departed the ranks of Crime And The City Solution. Linking up with keyboards player Genevieve McGuckin, who had previously lent her piano skills to Rowland and Lydia Lunch's classic 1982 remake of Nancy and Lee's 'Some Velvet Morning' (4AD, also featuring Barry Adamson and Mick Harvey), These Immortal Souls set about reshaping the myth of urban blues to their own design. "One thing I find disturbing about a lot of contemporary music is that it seems to be directly written to inspire one particular emotion, and I think that anything with any kind of depth should be able to inspire a whole range of conflicting emotions simultaneously," said Rowland at the time, outlining the singular path that his band was to take.

Rowland Howard's personal history still leant a lot of weight to preconceptions about These Immortal Souls, even before they had played a note. His ravaged guitar was an integral part of The Birthday Party, who had come from Australia to clave in the British post-punk scene in one terrifying and inspiring rush. After the Party's implosion in 1983, he and brother Harry, together with ex-Swell Maps/Red Crayola drummer Epic, had fashioned the moving emotional traumas of Crime with singer Simon Bonney and multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey. Much was expected of this "splinter group from a splinter group," especially from the singer/songwriter himself: "I had lots of songs I really liked," Rowland recalled, "songs that would never have been done if I hadn't said, 'Right, I'm going to sing them,' because you can't give somebody a set of lyrics and tell them what to sing if you want any kind of sincerity."

The first single, 'Marry Me (Lie Lie)' was released on September 7, 1987, an it prompted Melody Maker to ask; "What possesses Rowland Howard when he writes an immaculate piece of music, something that might have qualified as the score for Romero's next film?" A trueness to self might well have been the answer, for TIS were looking in places few others would go for inspiration: "All of the music I like is music that really has the ability to hit you really hard and make you feel things on an incredibly instinctive level where you don't have to think at all or analyse what's going on," explained Rowland. "It's just basically that it strikes some chord with you really deep down." The fully-fleshed album, 'Get Lost (Don't Lie!)' was to follow on December 1, 1987, and at once seduced the listener into a parallel universe where despair met optimism head on to the sound of ghostly pianola playing rinky-dink waltzes of Phil Spector tunes. Naturally, the many conflicts presented by the album were the base of it's very appeal. "The difference between us and, say, U2 is that while they are epic, they're anxious to portray a nobility, a sense of injustice, 'Why are these terrible things allowed to exist?'" explained Rowland. "Whereas we would say that it is necessary for these things to exist." Highlights from the album included the cascading 'These Immortal Souls', the ragged epic 'One In Shadow, One In Sun', the murderous betrayal '"Blood And Sand" She Said' and the cover of Alex Chilton's 'Hey! Little Child', a song that opened up the same multi-dimensions as Rowland was pursuing. "A metaphor for desire without limits, love pursuing the phantasm of possession to the point of reason," Melody Maker dramatically decreed.

These Immortal Souls began 1988 with a scattering of live dates that never failed to impress, inspire or intimidate. "The struggle between the sense of destruction and preservation is their biggest attraction," noted one reviewer, uncannily foreseeing not just the precarious joys of their music, but the lengthy gap between 'Get Lost (Don't Lie!)' and their next recorded work.

Fruits of past collaborations came to light in April 1988, with the release of the 'Honeymoon In Red' album, through Lydia Lunch's Widowspeak label. Originally recorded in June 1988 in Berlin, this dramatic LP featured Rowland, Lydia, Geneveive, Birthday Party bassist Tracey Pew and was remixed by Jim 'Foetus' Thirlwell. Lydia had been determined to work with Rowland since she first heard The Birthday Party, to the point of upping sticks from New York to follow him to London, determined to work with, "the best guitarist in the world."

Rowland, Harry and Lydia collaborated again on 1991's excellent, eponymous Shotgun Wedding album, a record that furthered their slant as a flicknife toting, moonshine swilling Hazlewood and Sinatra for the '90's with such white trash classics as 'Burning Skulls' and 'Black Ju Ju'. They toured as a band towards the end of '91, together with future Bad Seeds percussionist Jim Sclavunos on drums. Rowland also played a one off gig in London with a band called Tender Justice, and worked on Einstürzende Neubauten's 'Thirsty Animal' single, which proved to be a unique experience: "When I walked into the studio, Blixa (Bargeld) had his body miked up and they were punching him to get a bass drum beat," he remembered. "And the studio floor was covered with meat, and they had this dog they'd starved for three days with contact mics all over it's stomach...and they were recording him eating the meat! It was really bizarre. I had to stand in the middle of this studio, the floor strewn with these bones and meat, and play guitar. It was quite a hard act to follow, believe me." In September 1992, as part of a Bad Seeds gig, Rowland played three songs with a partially reformed Birthday Party (Martyn P. Casey standing in for the late Tracey Pew) at London's Town And Country Club - 'Wild World', 'Dead Joe' and 'Nick The Stripper'. "It was pretty funny," the guitarist recalled. "It was really good and really exciting but in a way it was also a flashback to 1983 or something, because I still wanted to do completely different songs to everyone else. I suggested what songs I thought we should do and Nick and Mick said, 'That's stupid!' And I thought, "Right, nothing's changed...'"

But despite these outside forays, Rowland had been seized with writer's block, and it wasn't until October 1992 that These Immortal Souls reappeared with the 'King Of Kalifornia' single and December's 'I'm Never Gonna Die Again' LP. The mood was optimistic, and the record deployed a sense of self-depreciating wit, a talent Rowland had not often been acknowledged for before. "A lot of the record is about other people's perceptions of you and how if enough people treat you in a certain way that's what you become after a while," he pointed out. "For years people have described records I've made as being depressing, but I don't find records like that depressing. I find Buck's Fizz depressing...or any music that expresses no humanity. And also, I've just got tired of the group being viewed as humourless. There's always been a lot of irony in the songs; people seem to take so much at face value, so literally, and that's a shame." Nevertheless, 'I'm Never Gonna Die Again' was received warmly. "Not only is Howard one of the great guitarists of his time, but there are few songwriters who can capture his sense of romantic desolation," opined Vox. With the arch 'And So The Story Goes', the thunderous guitar squall of 'King Of Kalifornia' and the heaven-sent 'Shamed', Howard had hit a songwriting peak that demanded attention.

Since the release of 'I'm Never Gonna Die Again', Epic Soundtracks has left These Immortal Souls to work on solo projects, while Rowland, Harry and Geneveive returned to their native Australia, having suffered enough "Fear and self-loathing in London." Rowland has continued to work with Lydia Lunch, playing live together (he appears on her 1994 'Live In Siberia' LP) and working on potential new Shotgun Wedding material. These Immortal Souls remain dormant at this point, but as history has proved, with this band, if anything can happen in will. Perhaps the best testament to Rowland Howard's career so far is that of the many things said about him, the best is simply, shut up and hear him play.