A Sweet Kind Of Pain: A Brief Review Of The New Compilation From Simon Bonney (Crime And The City Solution) Ahead Of Baltimore Concert Next Week

Simon Bonney, founder of Crime and The City Solution, had an interesting and largely-overlooked solo career in the Nineties. Similar to how Nick Cave left The Birthday Party to establish a blues-inspired new form of post-punk, Bonney left Crime and The City Solution to explore and perfect a new kind of Americana, what we might even call roots rock. The best of Bonney's two solo albums, along with rarities from an unreleased third one, are now collected on a new compilation. To put it simply, Past, Present, Future, out now on Mute, is an essential collection.

"Ravenswood" and "There Can Only Be One", both from 1992's Forever, have a nice, mournful twang about them. If Bonney here sounds like he's worlds away from Crime and The City Solution, there are some stylistic similarities here as, like those earlier tunes, these are big numbers. Elsewhere, "Don't Walk Away From Love", from 1995's Everyman, sees Simon briefly enter the sort of territory usually commanded by Robert Forster as a solo artist. This is, frankly, the closest Bonney ever got to the mainstream, but it's still wildly personal music, and utterly unlike so much that was made in that era from lesser artists.

Past, Present, Future earns its essential label because of the previously-unreleased stuff here, like the elegiac "A Sweet Kind Of Pain", and a lanky cover of "Duchess" from Scott Walker. The two best rarities here, "Eyes of Blue" and "Annabelle Lee", both feel nearly like Crime and The City Solution, a fact that suggests, should Bonney have ever finished album number three, it was going to be a gentle steering away from the sort of Americana he had been pursuing in the Nineties.

Rather amazingly, Simon Bonney is touring American now, with his wife, Bronwyn Adams, in the band. Bonney is opening for Mark Lanegan on this tour, and local readers of this site should be advised that there's no D.C. stop, but one at the Ottobar in Baltimore. More details on that show are here.

Past, Present, Future is out now via Mute.

Details on Simon Bonney can be found on the official City and The City Solution Facebook page.

[Photo: Uncredited promotional picture]