photo credit: Martyn Goodacre
Today Crime & the City Solution have released their sixth studio album, the killer, on vinyl, CD and digitally via Mute. The album, their first in over a decade, was inspired by work delivering aid programs and examining the ways conflict manifests in everyday life.
The band’s first album release in over a decade will be followed by a UK and European tour that kicks off in November and includes three UK performances in London, Bristol and Colchester. Full dates are listed below.
The album began life as a PhD application that came into fruition when the band’s core members Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams found themselves stuck in their native Australia under one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, their nomadic lifestyle put on pause by the pandemic. “Naturally”, says Simon, “I sat and I pieced together a PhD application about decision making in Afghanistan in the late ‘80s. But, as it turned out, it was actually more of a record than it was a PhD.”
The PhD and by turn, the album, found inspiration from Bonney’s work delivering aid programs across the Indo-Pacific region. Through that work, he visited places with high levels of violence and the album, in part, acted as a way in which to process the effect that turmoil has had on his psyche and of the “dead bodies in my dreams,” that he sings about in the title track. He explains, “There’s no mention of American decision making in Afghanistan on the album, but in terms of subject matter there’s a lot that’s pretty similar; a lot of the record is about loss of faith.”
Rather than a dramatic retelling or glorification of the things that Simon has experienced, the killer focuses on the way they manifest in the everyday and the way humans operate under their shadow. “There’s a veneer of normalcy and civilization that people hold onto until they just can’t hold on anymore,” Simon says. “I’m interested in normalcy that exists within what we would consider to be extraordinary situations.”
Throughout the record Simon also weaves in recurring images of uncontrollable natural forces and a farmer who, rather than attempt in vain to control them, seeks to accept and work alongside them. “You can predict to some extent what nature is going to do, you can see the tornado coming, but you can’t predict which house it’s going to hit,” explains Simon.
Working briefly in post-invasion Ukraine following the album’s completion, he saw that uncertainty again: “There was a building that was absolutely destroyed by a missile that was half a mile off the actual target. The buildings on either side were perfectly intact, but in the middle was a crater. Yet, in the face of such uncertainty, there was this incredible resilience that seemed to be born of accepting life as it was at that moment, no matter how challenging and uncertain.”
“Records, in my experience, seek to answer a question,” Bonney continues. “But they usually end up posing new ones too.” What questions, then, does Crime & the City Solution’s the killer seek to answer? And what new unknowables does it summon? As with all great art, the fine details are the listener’s to bestow, but what emerges most of all is the vitality of stillness. Whether faced with the uncaring sublimity of nature, the tempestuous brilliance of a partner, or the everyday impact of human-made horrors, it is better to be a tree, accepting uncertainty, than a king. “Trauma isn’t like a rapier scar, it’s a festering sore that you’ve just got to let heal. Art can help with that,” Simon says.
the killer was recorded in Berlin by the second incarnation of the band to be based in the German capital. Core members Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams were joined by Frederic Lyenn (piano, bass, synth), Donald Baldie (guitar), Georgio Valentino (synth, guitar), Chris Hughes (drums, percussion) and Joshua Murphy (piano, guitar), and for the first time they worked with a producer, the legendary Martin J. Fiedler, who also added synth and Mellotron to the album.
CRIME & THE CITY SOLUTION LIVE DATES:
11/23/2023 - Haacht, BE, Can’t Live In a Living-Room
11/24/2023 - London, UK - The Moth Club
11/25/2023 - Bristol, UK - The Cube Cinema
11/26/2023 - Colchester, UK, - Colchester Arts Centre
11/29/2023 - Paris, FR - La Boule Noire
11/30/2023 - Geneva, CH - L'Usine
12/1/2023 - Karlsruhe, DE - P8
12/2/2023 - Ebensee, AT - Kino Ebensee
12/3/2023 - Zagreb, HR - Mochvara
12/4/2024 - Milano,IT - Arci Bellezza
12/5/2023 - Munich, DE - Muffatwerk
12/6/2023 - Prague, CZ - Fuchs2
12/7/2023 - Hungary, HU - Instant
12/8/2023 - Linz, AT - Stadtwerkstatt
12/9/2023 - Poznań, PL - 2Progi
12/10/2023 - Warsaw, PL - Niebo
12/12/2023 - Dresden, DE - Chemiefabrik
12/13/2023 - Hamburg, DE - Hafenklang
12/14/2023 - Copenhagen, DK - BETA
12/15/2023 - Oslo, NO - Salt
12/16/2023 - Stockholm, SE - HUS7
12/17/2023 - Gothenburg, SE - Musikens Hus
12/19/2023 – Berlin, DE - Urban SpreeTickets are on sale now – visit http://crimeandthecitysolution.org for up-to-date details RECENT PRAISE FOR CRIME & THE CITY SOLUTION:
“A wounded and battered ensemble of musicians forcing themselves to keep playing even as the war rages on around them. Bonney asks simply “Will there be peace in my time?” throughout this drifting ballad, knowing all too well that the answer will be in the negative” – Paste
“...the songs, which mesmerise, address geopolitics and global suffering” - Prog
“While the near nine-minute ‘Killer’ may seethe with an undeniable rage and bite, it still feels coated in a warmth - offering beauty amid the despair” - Uncut
“…elegiac…” - Brooklyn Vegan
“Crime & the City Solution return with one of the albums of the year” - Louder Than War
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