These Immortal Souls - Get Lost (Don't Lie!) (1987)

Led by guitarist Rowland S. Howard of the Birthday Party, These Immortal Souls wander through the haze of smoky cabarets and faded photos worn at the edges on their full-length debut, Get Lost (Don't Lie). Throughout this bleak and paranoid midnight journey, the band plays dark marches ("Marry Me [Lie! Lie!]" and "Hide"); Velvet Underground-inspired, repetitive, piano rock ("Hey! Little Child"); and atmospheric Doors-meets-Bowie somber rock & roll ("These Immortal Souls"). They even cover the song "Hey! Little Child" by Big Star power pop genius Alex Chilton. This monumental album by dark poets of the soul -- Rowland S. Howard, Genevieve McGuckin, Harry Howard, and Epic Soundtracks (founder of the Swell Maps who, sadly, was found dead in 1997) -- draws from sources such as Leonard Cohen, the Rolling Stones, and even Joy Division while completely avoiding the trappings of the goth genre. Simultaneously rocking, strangely beautiful, and scary, this album foreshadowed the sound of bands to come over a decade later, like Three Mile Pilot, the Black Heart Procession, Slaves, and Pleasure Forever. These Immortal Souls made up a short, but brilliant branch of the Birthday Party lineage that wrongly goes far less noticed than the Bad Seeds.