Rowland S. Howard

Andy J Ryan Apr 11, 2023

Rowland S. Howard, The Famous Spiegeltent, 6 November, 2008

The Famous Spiegeltent bore witness to an-all too rare Sydney performance by underground hero Rowland S. Howard.
Rowland S. Howard almost instantly demystified the impressive starry & smoke-filled salubrious ambience of the Spiegeltent with an opening line of “Gees, I thought I smoked a lot, but I’ve got nothing on you guys” and also offered “If there are any big gaps in the songs – it’s because I’ve forgotten the lyrics…”.
A good summation of the evening and Howard in general came with the lyric “Here I stand in a suit as ragged as my nerves”. With just his banged-up Fender Jaguar Rowland S. Howard was able to create torrid and tuneful backing to his gritty tales of a hard-edged life.
You could almost say that being a guitar slinger was inevitable for Rowland S. Howard, his fingers are so long, dextrous and nimble they’d be wasted doing anything else. It is just seemingly the rest of his life that may not have exactly gone to plan.
The songs and their content really were so utterly bleak and certainly weren’t celebratory in any way, yet Howard always followed them up with a bone-dry quip or otherwise engaging tale. Howard possesses an utterly unique and distinctive guitar style, morphing gritty blues-focussed riffs into biting chords and all with an ominous atmosphere to cloud his troubled tales.
Thankfully, the narratives aren’t merely torment and woe, there is a very acutely aware wry and almost romantic black humour to Howard’s lyrics and there are some great lines within the gloom including – “You’re bad for me like cigarettes/But I haven’t sucked enough of you yet” from Teenage Snuff Film’s ‘Dead Radio’ or “I was Crowned by sorrow, but I want to abdicate” from his version of Those Immortal Souls ‘Crowned’.
For all his inherent talent it has been a crying shame that various mitigating and medicinal circumstances have seen only the one solo album – Teenage Snuff Film – to Howard’s credit. His announcement of “I’m in the studio recording a new album” was welcome news indeed, even if as Howard claimed “it will probably not be released for another decade”. An audience request of “Can you play something off it?” was met with “Ah, that would have been a good idea and a nice thing wouldn’t it, but its hard enough remembering the lyrics to songs I’ve been playing for years, let alone ones I’ve just written”. In stark contrast to the Spiegeltent venue, the set as a whole was a bit rough around the edges, but what it lacked in lustre, it more than made up for in integrity.
The intimately gathered audience were treated to an absorbing and uncompromising display from one of Australian underground music’s foremost formative figures. The crowd showed their appreciation at the set’s end by stamping the floor until Rowland reluctantly returned, remarking before giving us one final send-off song“ I don’t usually do encores, so think yourself lucky. However if I do, I usually play something so lame, you wont ask for another one”.