Track Listing

1. Dead Radio
2. Breakdown (and then...)
3. She Cried
4. I Burnt Your Clothes
5. Exit Everything
6. Silver Chain
7. White Wedding
8. Undone
9. Autoluminescent
10. Sleep Alone

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #65619 in Music
• Released on: 2000-11-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
With his first solo album, Teenage Snuff Film, Roland S. Howard unabashedly opens up the diseased chambers of his dark heart on a record transcendent with vengeance. Brooding back-up is provided by Mick Harvey on drums and Brian Hooper on bass with melancholic strings and organ, but the real violence is inflicted by Howard's pained lyrics and howling guitar. Opener "Dead Radio" calmly weighs up the yin and yang of a long-term relationship: "You're bad for me like cigarettes/You're good for me like Coca-Cola," Howard pines as his guitar curls like smoke around memories fond and foul. The pent-up rage simmers on "Breakdown", as the singer "chokes on this heart of hate" while his snarled-up guitar raises up like a tsunami behind him. "She Cried" strips the pop sheen from the Shangri-Las original, leaving a tapestry of raw emotions. "Exit Everything" is a an epic death trip sung to a suitably apocalyptic arrangement. "I'm a misanthropic man," Howard finally admits on the closing track, "Sleep Alone". But by then it's too late. The hate has taken hold as music roars around him, unleashed like a terrifying force of nature that inevitably leads to human devastation. --Chris Campion

Customer Reviews

Classic album from former Birthday Party member
'Teenage Snuff Film the Original Soundtrack' was originally recorded in 1998 and picked up a few years later by Cooking Vinyl. I was one of many who found a lot of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' albums fairly unrewarding - 'Henry's Dream', 'Let Love In', 'Murder Ballads' & 'No More Shall We Part' were all patchy - the kicks I needed were found more in Birthday Party records. 'Teenage Snuff Film' is probably the kind of album you wish Nick Cave would make, though there was some vigour in the recent double-set from the Bad Seeds...but this was more like it!

Reuniting Boys Next Door/Birthday Party members Rowland S. Howard and Mick Harvey is great stuff - the former's post-Birthday Party work with Those Immortal Souls, Crime & the City Solution & Lydia Lunch seems particularly overlooked - this is his best work thus far. Harvey is back in his late Birthday Party role on drums, as well as cntributing organ and some guitar- Brian Hooper contributes bass and there are guest appearances from Andrew Entsch, Genevieve McGuckin & Steve Boyle. Harvey's non Bad Seeds work (notably with Go-Between Robert Forster, his Gainsbourg-covers album 'Intoxicated Man' & P.J. Harvey) is frequently more rewarding that the Bad Seeds stuff ('The Boatman's Call' was great though!)

I'm really surprised people didn't make a bigger deal over this record, it's an album I play frequently - Howard's vocals perfect melancholic non-singer style like former cohort Cave and Leonard Cohen. It's all a highlight, but the songs I'd pick out as key features would include opener 'dead radio' (choice lyrics like "you're bad for me like cigarettes - but I haven't sucked enough of you yet...you're good for me like coca-cola - I don't get any younger, you don't get any older..."), which veers off into a collision of Johnny Cash and Ennio Morricone; the epic 'i burnt your clothes' & the closing duo 'autoluminescant' & 'sleep alone.' Howard & co even contribute some great covers, easily up there with the quality approach both Cave & Howard (the latter in a smaller role) did on 'Kicking Against the Pricks.' The Shangri-La's classic 'He Said' gets a gender change, while Billy Idol's 'White Wedding' is wonderfully delivered - one of the great cover versions like Low's 'Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me', This Mortal Coil's 'Song to the Siren', John Cale's 'Hallelujah' & Mark Lanegan's 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night/In the Pines.' Taking something pop and very MTV is amusing stuff, so it's probably closer in spirit to Low's Journey-cover, Radiohead's 'Nobody Does It Better' or The Replacements' 'Black Diamond.' It's a great song, and Howard explained it at the time as more interesting than another cover of 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door'! It fits perfectly with the theme of the album, in case you didn't notice...

Yes, the theme of the album...mmmm, teenage sex, death and woe songs - the soundtrack to teenagers lost in adult bodies, I don't get any younger, you don't get any older. A permanent teenage soundtrack and a bit like Eddie Cochran's 'Last Kiss' colliding with the film 'River's Edge'...File next to Cohen's 'Songs of Love & Hate', Mark Lanegan's 'The Winding Sheet', & Dylan's 'Time Out of Mind'...

Heart of Darkness
Roland S Howard has created a brilliant collection of songs that capture the inevitable heartbreak of existence. Sounds like heavy stuff? It is. Howard demonstrates just how much he has matured as a songwriter and musician since his days with the Birthday Party (featuring frontman Nick Cave) and he was no slouch then. The inclusion of Mick Harvey (an erstwhile Bad Seed with the aforementioned Cave) on tubs and The Hoopster (known for his work with the Beasts of Bourbon and Kim Salmon) on bass, provides Howard with the perfect backdrop for the dark journey he takes the listener on. Each track is about the dark side of love, even the cover of pop-punkster Billy Idol's "White Wedding" is rendered as a cynical dirge. But the album is not limited to lyrical brilliance, Howard is first and foremost a guitarist and this is his finest work to date. If you like the Beasts of Bourbon's "The Low Road" or Kim Salmon & the Surrealists "Sin Factory", then I suggest you buy this immediately. If you haven't heard them but you just broke up with your girl, then I suggest you buy all three...