Marry Me Tonight

Marry Me Tonight is the debut LP from HTRK, produced by Rowland S Howard and Lindsay Gravina at Birdland Studios in Melbourne, 2006. Guest musicians included Rowland S Howard, Rohan Rebeiro (My Disco) and Conrad Standish (Devastations).
Blast First Petite (UK) released Marry Me Tonight on CD in 2009 in Europe, Japan and USA with a special launch show on 9 March 2009 at the Lexington in London.
------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------How to buy
Order direct from HTRK for 10 GBP (ppd worldwide) here
Also available from:Boomkat (UK) , Rough Trade (UK) , Norman Records (UK) , Aquarius Records (US) , Red Eye Records (Australia) , Missing Link (Australia) , Polyester Records (Australia)
------------------------------------REVIEWS----------------- -------------------------------- NME - 8/10
Refusinik Melbourne trio HTRK (haterock) have an allergy to vowels, catchiness, happiness, fun, space and light. Formed in a gesture of disgust at the hairy tendencies of hometown heroes such as Jet, their debut (produced by Birthday Party guitarist Rowland S Howard) is a Suicide-black K-hole soundtrack of a record, but by fuck it's sexy. 'Rent Boy' opens with a sleazily winding gothic guitar, inches deep in reverb, Jonnine Standish's uncannily Kate Jackson-esque tones laying on your ears like an oppresive weight. "I'll get you home by nine... or whenever" she promises on the fantastically creepy 'Ha', while the lush 'Kiss Before The Fall' is the dark blood beneath Chairlift's 'Bruises'. Emily Mackay
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TIME OUT - 4/6
Generating excessively deep, gutter-scraping riffs playing at a funereal pace and ear-excavating volume, Melbourne trio HTRK (pronounced 'haterock') are the sort of band who teeter between being extraordinarily sexy and making you shit yourself and part company with your liver. On record, and with former Bad Seed Rowland S Howard on production, sexy prevails. 'Pull your panties down a little more,' intones Jonnine Standish over a fractured industrial groove in one of the less pornographic moments. Think Suicide in ripped black stockings. Bela Todd
------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------ CYCLIC DEFROST
HTRK didn’t think much of the Melbourne (Australian) obsession with garage rock in the early part of the 21st century, so they used that as inspiration for their name and headed to London, via an extended stopover in Berlin. The cities themselves could give an indication of HTRK’s sound, particularly when seen in conjunction with the name ‘Roland S. Howard’ loudly heralded as producer on the back of the packaging. The shadow of The Birthday Party certainly looms large, as does krautrock, early Public Image Limited, Suicide and a myriad of other post-punk/no-wave tangents. Which is not to say it’s completely derivative, just that the band is happy to be part of a lineage.
There are 4 elements to HTRK’s sound : 1. Sparse, primitive drum machine loops; 2. Sean Stewart’s repetitive bass riffs which drive through entire songs unchanging; 3. Nigel Yang’s abstract guitar bursts, at times abrasive, at others mercurial and detached; 4. Jonnine Standish’es fey, androgynous vocal monotones. It’s a simple mix, but the band milk it for all its worth and the overall effect is for the listener to be enveloped in the band’s unchanging mood. It’s very hypnotic. Highlighting individual tracks seems a little pointless – the sheer unchanging magnitude of each track means the album kind of works as a single suite, the changes from track to track serving where a regular pop song might change from verse to chorus to bridge. Indeed, HTRK slow the pop structure down to a funereal drawl then suck all energy into their black hole. The lightness of the digital drums also gives more an otherworldly ambience. They never scale the sheer chaos of The Birthday Party or Keith Levine/Jah Wobble’s Public Image Ltd, but that’s probably what helps stop them from sounding like retro-ists. They do offer their own ideas to the equation – most potently a deliberate lethargy which lays a hazy blanket over all proceedings. Lyrically, the aesthetic is consistent, with a minimal amount of vaguely provocative lyrics repeated – “We could make it if I met you in a different head space/I could make it/We could shake it if I met you in a different head space/I could shake it”.
Marry Me Tonight is an album with a very specific and, dare I say, narrow aesthetic. HTRK, however, are masters of that chosen aesthetic and drive it mercilessly across the 37 minutes of the album. The end result is mesmerising. Adrian Elmer
------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------ AQUARIUS RECORDS
When was the last time anyone made a Sisters Of Mercy reference and meant it as a wholehearted compliment? Well, that's definitely the case for HTRK (pronounced Haterock, FYI) as this Melbourne trio adopts a bleaker than black stance through their psychosexual dirges. With slinky Goth basslines, ghostly coldwave electronics, and skeletal slow-mo drum machine pulses, HTRK's arrangements mirror those that the Sisters Of Mercy produced for The Reptile House EP (which found them at their slowest, creepiest, and most anti-pop). But instead of Andrew Eldritch and his affected baritone, the singer for HTRK is Jonnine Clementine Standish whose comatose droning is seductive and compelling in its own right. She adopts the roles as the co-dependent, the broken-hearted, the addicted, the master, the servant, and the lonely, all delivered in Lydia Lunch's "I Fell In Love With A Ghost" dispassionate, zombified mantra. On the track "Rent Boy", Standish breaks out of that montone delivery, bellowing this dark ballad that comes across more like PJ Harvey than before. We have to wonder if the title is a reference to the These Immortal Souls track "Marry Me," penned by the former Birthday Party guitarist Roland S. Howard who happens to have produced this record and has sprinkled his narcotized swamp rock guitar throughout. No matter if it is or if it isn't, Howard's voodoo production for HTRK certainly gives them that Birthday Party feel. Great, very dark stuff for sure!
------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------ BOOMKAT
HTRK release their debut album proper, having previously treated us to the sandblasting electronics of their live LP, Nostalgia. Marry Me Tonight is considerably cleaner and more focused than that effort, stripping the Melbourne group's sound to a largely electronic concoction comprising primitive beats and shards of post-rock influenced guitar and vocals that sound like the work of a comatose Kim Gordon. 'Kiss Before The Fall' sounds like a modern-day 'Venus In Furs' with its thudding drone-rock sensibilities, the crisp, unconditioned drum machine linking up with what sustaining guitar tones in a robotic VU-influenced fashion. 'Ha' revels in its skeletal no-wave influence, grinding bass tones against a drum pattern that's equally indebted to Pan Sonic and Suicide (the album definitely starts to feel like a tribute to the Blast First label at times, though that's certainly no criticism). Certain tracks, like 'Fascinator' and 'Rent Boy' have closer run-ins with pop music, stamping out melodies in a more forthcoming fashion and consequently giving this icily cool LP a more accommodating side that'll ease you into its bewitching noir-ish universe.
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