Crime & the City Solution are an Australian rock band formed in late 1977 by singer-songwriter and mainstay Simon Bonney. They disbanded in 1979 leaving only bootleg recordings and demos. In late 1983, Bonney travelled to London and in 1985 he formed a new version of the group in the U.K. which included members of the recently disbanded The Birthday Party; later they transferred to Berlin, where they issued four albums – Room of Lights (1986), Shine (1988), The Bride Ship (1989) and Paradise Discotheque (1990) – before disbanding again in 1991. In 2012, Bonney reformed the band in Detroit with two veterans of its Berlin era and a handful of new members.

The Birthday Party were an Australian post-punk band, active from 1977 to 1983. The group's "bleak and noisy soundscapes," which drew irreverently on blues, free jazz, and rockabilly, provided the setting for vocalist Nick Cave's disturbing tales of violence and perversion. Their 1981 single "Release the Bats" was particularly influential on the emerging gothic scene. Despite limited commercial success, The Birthday Party's influence has been far-reaching, and they have been called "one of the darkest and most challenging post-punk groups to emerge in the early '80s."