Looking back, thirty-odd years later from the heights that Nick Cave’s musical projects would eventually scale, it’s more than a little tempting to see Door, Door, the debut full-length from his early band the Boys Next Door as little more than a footnote or a tentative, inauspicious start. Alternately, one might fixate on this album as a kind of mystical key that unlocks the manifold secrets of his future career. Neither approach is particularly appealing, though, and while the generally sprightly material on Door, Door bears little resemblance to Cave’s later work with either the Birthday Party or the Bad Seeds, there’s enough talent on display to make it more than simply a minor curio.

The ten songs on Door, Door are tightly wound but immediately catchy post-punk exercises that often verge on new wave. Several could be slotted in a radio playlist alongside Blondie and Devo without seeming out of place; album opener “The Nightwatchman” could almost pass for an early Elvis Costello tune. In that respect, Door, Door does come across as a tentative (albeit enthusiastic) opening gambit from a bunch of young guys trying their hand at the sounds happening around them. Despite the fact that Cave is credited with songwriting for the majority of the songs, he had yet to come into his distinctive lyrical style, and his vocal delivery felt more like a restrained pantomime than a full-throated performance. “After A Fashion” is one of the only songs that really hinted at the latent gothic power of his voice, and as such, it’s the album’s high point.

Door, Door is also notable because it only featured the band’s second guitarist Rowland Howard on the b-side, which, given his songwriting credits for three of the side’s five songs, suggests that his addition was crucial to guiding the band in the darker, wilder direction they would soon take as the Birthday Party. “Dive Position” flirts with a bit of the demented carnival atmosphere that would mark some of Cave’s later work, but the closing song “Shivers” is particularly notable for how it showed Cave to already possess at least the urge — if not yet the fully assured skill — to croon. But even this was only the sound of a band at the bottom edge of a soon to be explosive curve, making Door, Door the least essential pre-Bad Seeds material by far.