Crime & the City Solution are an Australian rock band formed in late 1977 by singer-songwriter and mainstay Simon Bonney. They disbanded in 1979 leaving only bootleg recordings and demos. In late 1983, Bonney travelled to London and in 1985 he formed a new version of the group in the U.K. which included members of the recently disbanded The Birthday Party; later they transferred to Berlin, where they issued four albums – Room of Lights (1986), Shine (1988), The Bride Ship (1989) and Paradise Discotheque (1990) – before disbanding again in 1991. In 2012, Bonney reformed the band in Detroit with two veterans of its Berlin era and a handful of new members.
Critic David Sheridan described the band's music as characterized by slow tempos, dark moods and Bonney's forlorn vocals, all of which can range from "endurance testing" at worst to "hauntingly beautiful" at best.
History
Crime & the City Solution are an Australian rock group which formed in late 1977 in Sydney with a line-up of Simon Bonney on lead vocals, Phil Kitchener on bass guitar, Dave MacKinnon on saxophone, Don McLennan (ex-Particles) on drums and Harry Zantey on guitar. The group has had five distinct line-ups with Bonney as the only mainstay: Sydney in 1977–78, Melbourne in 1979, two groupings in Berlin from 1985 to 1990, and Detroit from 2012 onwards. In the late 1970s Bonney had met McLennan and sometimes provided guest vocals for McLennan's group, The Particles. According to Australian rock music historian, Ian McFarlane, The Particles had "a cult following around the inner-city Sydney scene courtesy of its delightful, melodious pop sound". In contrast, according to Peter Nelson of Pulp fanzine, Crime & the City Solution, used "An exciting blend of fuzzed monotone guitar runs and squawking saxophone riffs . . . [like] the drone songs on Wire's Pink Flag".
In late 1978 Bonney and McLennan had relocated to Melbourne where they formed a new version of Crime & the City Solution with Chris Astley on keyboards, Kim Beissel on saxophone, Lindsay O'Meara on bass guitar (ex-Voigt/465) and Dan Wallace-Crabbe on guitar. In Melbourne Bonney became friends with local post-punk group, The Boys Next Door (later known as The Birthday Party). Crime & the City Solution broke up in 1979 after a number of live shows and recording an unreleased demo. Wallace-Crabbe later joined Laughing Clowns, O'Meara returned to Sydney and joined Pel Mel, Beissel played in → ↑ →, Astley and McLennan in other bands.
In late 1983 Bonney moved to London and reconnected with members of The Birthday Party. In 1985 he formed another version of Crime & the City Solution in London with Mick Harvey on drums, keyboards and bass guitar and Rowland S. Howard on guitar and backing vocals. Howard's younger brother, Harry, soon joined on bass guitar. In June 1985 the group's debut four-track EP, The Dangling Man, was released by Mute Records in the UK and Possum Records in Australia. McFarlane found the EP provided "a gloomy, stripped-down, blues-flavoured sound". A six-track EP, Just South of Heaven, followed in September for UK release only. It was "cleaner, more powerful set of songs dominated by Bonney's dramatic vocals and chilling instrumentation". After the release Epic Soundtracks (aka Kevin Godfrey, ex-Swell Maps) joined on drums which freed Harvey to concentrate on keyboards and guitar. In 1986 Bronwyn Adams, Bonney's domestic partner, joined on violin and backing vocals.
With the line-up of Adams, Bonney, Harvey, Rowland and Harry Howard, and Soundtracks, Crime & the City Solution recorded its debut album, Room of Lights, produced by the band, Flood and Tony Cohen. They recorded the album in Berlin. On 27 October 1986 it was released in the UK on Mute Records. Amy Hanson of Allmusic praised it as "rough and ready rock that slotted itself nicely under a gothic canvas – they were and remain post-punk's forgotten kings ... Its urgency jangles, its cacophony is dichotomous, and, at times, the underlying energy is breathtaking as the band storms through a great set". Late that year the Howard brothers and Soundtracks left to form their own group, These Immortal Souls.