4AD home

The Birthday Party - Junkyard by The Birthday Party Reissued
The Birthday Party : Junkyard by The Birthday Party Reissued
17th July 2012

4AD are re-issuing JunkYard as a special 180gm vinyl edition on 27th August. Apart from the 12” LP, the package also contains a bonus 7” of the single 'Release The Bats' and 'Blast Off'. Additionally, the reissues includes a CD of all 12 tracks, enabling fans to access the music digitally. The album has been mastered from the Henry Rollins 2000 re-master, previously unavailable in Europe (see Mick Harvey’s comments below), while the single is a new 2012 master, taken from the original studio analogue tapes.

“With the passing of 30 years, Junkyard still sounds as if it’s waiting for rock music to catch up with it. Throwing down a taunting gauntlet to subsequent generations of musicians, this feral collection of songs simultaneously closes a door on something that can’t be repeated or improved upon. The distance of time has failed to reduce its sonic power and revisiting Junkyard three decades after its birth is to rediscover an album more melodic if no less manic as was initially perceived.”    - Julian Marszalek, The Quietus - 30 April 2012

"I think it’s a great record, really. We did some weird things with the way we put it together and mastered it: we put the songs really close together so there were hardly any gaps; we put loads of treble on it and that crazy cover which I’ve never really liked. I’m sure it’s a great cover but I’m not sure it represents the album all that well. But the actual contents of the album are really amazing and they’re a very special set of recordings and that’s what really stands up; most people don’t look at the cover these days, they just play the music. Henry Rollins did a re-master of it and made the songs have longer gaps between them. In the end it’s down to the songs and it’s pretty strong material." - Mick Harvey (The Birthday Party) interviewed for The Quietus

Side 1
1. She’s Hit
2. Dead Joe
3. The Dim Locator
4. Hamlet (Pow, Pow, Pow)
5. Several Sins
Side 2
6. Big-Jesus-Trash-Can
7. Kiss Me Black
8. 6” Gold Blade
9. Kewpie Doll
10. JunkYard

Bonus 7”
A. Release The Bats
B. Blast Off

Further information available here.