Simon Bonney, Bronwyn Adams and Joshua Murphy are taking Crime & The City Solution down to three voices, a violin and an acoustic guitar.
Simon Bonney is bringing Crime & The City Solution back to Australia in January with just a violin and guitar.
The trio will work through songs drawn from across the Crime & The City Solution catalogue, rebuilt for rooms where you can hear the breath between lines. Adams plays violin and sings against Bonney’s baritone. Murphy handles guitar, harmonies, and a solo set before each show. Five dates run from a pub in the central Victorian goldfields to MEMO Music Hall in St Kilda, with Sydney, Perth and Hobart in between.
Crime & The City Solution
- 9 January – Odessa at Leaver’s Hotel, Creswick VIC
- 15 January – The Vanguard, Sydney NSW
- 17 January – Milk Bar, Perth WA
- 22 January – Altar Bar, Hobart TAS
- 30 January – MEMO Music Hall, Melbourne VIC
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Bonney started the band in Sydney in 1977, aged 16, and the early run of shows through to 1979 landed hard on Melbourne’s art-punk crowd. Mick Harvey shipped him to England in 1984, where the lineup locked in around ex-Birthday Party guitarist Rowland S Howard, his brother Harry on bass and Epic Soundtracks on drums. That version of the band bowed out on screen, playing in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire.
Berlin came next, and with it Shine, The Bride Ship, Paradise Discotheque and the live record The Adversary. Members of Einstürzende Neubauten and the Bad Seeds passed through. Then the band went quiet for roughly two decades.
Bonney and Adams resurfaced in Detroit for American Twilight in 2013. Ten years after that came the killer, the sixth Crime & The City Solution album, cut in Berlin and released through Mute in 2023. The acoustic configuration has been out since 2025, playing Europe and the UK before this run.
Melbourne gets the last night of the tour on 30 January at MEMO. Tickets for every date are on sale now, and the Creswick show on 9 January is the one worth watching: Leaver’s Hotel seats a fraction of what MEMO does.
For more information, head here.
