BAD SEEDS founder member and smouldering, potent artist in her own right, Anita Lane left us far too young this April, at the age of 61; her on-off solo career had never really received the sales it should’ve been accorded, and she remained underappreciated, seemingly having slipped from view in recent years.
But Mute are seeking to readdress that with a reissue of the last of what was only a brace of solo albums, 2001’s Sex O’Clock, which will garner a deserved rerelease in early December – and it’ll be appearing on vinyl for the first time, too.
A classmate of Rowland S Howard at school. Anita was soon drawn into the orbit of Nick Cave and The Birthday Party, becoming romantically involved with him in the late Seventies. She co-wrote a number of tracks with Cave, including “A Dead Song”, “Dead Joe” and “Kiss Me Black”; as The Bad Seeds arose from the ashes of the former band in 1983, she co-wrote the perennial “From Her To Eternity” – still a prominent feature of Cave’s live sets to this day.
She relocated to Berlin, and continued to collaborate with Mick Harvey and Barry Adamson, also working with Einstürzende Neubauten, but released just two solo albums – 1993’s Dirty Pearl, and the subject of this reissue.
Sex O’Clock has been described as “honest, funny and often melancholic” and includes gems such as “The Next Man That I See”, “Do the Kamasutra” and the excellently lush, husky cover of Gil Scott-Heron’s “Home Is Where The Hatred Is” – which you can hear below.
Cave paid tribute to Anita Lane on her death, saying she was “the smartest and most talented of all of us, by far”.
Anita Lane’s Sex O’Clock will be released by Mute on vinyl and CD (both with lyric booklet) on December 10th; order your copy here.
