Kiss You Kidnapped Charabanc

It’s weird to think of Nikki Sudden and Rowland S. Howard as ‘veterans,’ just over a decade into their respective careers, but they’d both already survived punk and its fallout — Sudden with Swell Maps, Howard with The Birthday Party. Sudden had begun a prodigious solo career, and Howard was finally focusing on his own songs with These Immortal Souls, but this collaboration was one of the best albums either of them recorded, a loose set of song sketches for two lost troubadours. The acoustic guitars are lost in a studio sea of reverb; Howard’s stinging electric guitar is reserved for shading and punctuation; Sudden’s voice is a hacked swoon, Howard’s a deep, luscious croon. It’s a blues album, really, but one that makes loose with your preconceptions.