Bauhaus: Swing The Heartache - The BBC Sessions

BAUHAUS: SWING THE HEARTACHE: THE BBC SESSIONS (1980-1983/1989)

1) God In An Alcove; 2) Telegram Sam; 3) Double Dare; 4) The Spy In The Cab; 5) In The Flat Field; 6) St. Vitus Dance; 7) In Fear Of Fear; 8) Poison Pen; 9) Party Of The First Part; 10) Departure; 11) The Three Shadows, Pt. 2; 12) Silent Hedges; 13) Swing The Heartache; 14) Third Uncle; 15) Ziggy Stardust; 16) Terror Couple Kill Colonel; 17) Night Time; 18) She's In Parties.

As a minor bonus to all the faithful fans, Bauhaus were honored by this archival release from the BBC — originally issued as early as 1989, when this tradition was still relatively fresh and the officially released BBC recordings were still regarded as a gap-filling remedy for those artists whose live catalog left a lot to be desired. These particular sessions, mostly recorded for John Peel's and David Jensen's broadcasts, cover the chronological entirety of Bauhaus' classic career, from 1980 to 1983, and work very well as a basic introduction to the band's work and image — pleasantly concentrating on whatever was relevant for the band at the time of performing rather than just on reproducing the commercial hits.

This means that the package may not pretend at being a «comprehensive anthology» (how could one have a comprehensive anthology without ʽBela Lugosi's Deadʼ or ʽHollow Hillsʼ?), but it provides several impressive snapshots of particular moments in time — for instance, on a 1982 session they play the second (waltzing) part of ʽThe Three Shadowsʼ and the non-album oddity ʽParty Of The First Partʼ, where parts of the dialog soundtrack to the cartoon ʽThe Devil And Daniel Mouseʼ (it­self a send-up of The Devil And Daniel Webster) are backed by an eerie lounge jazz exercise, a fairly atypical achievement for Bauhaus, but with an effect that is just as comical­ly creepy as their straightforward «Goth» business.

One does, however, have to be careful, because a few of these tracks turn out to be exactly the same as already present on studio albums — ʽThird Uncleʼ, for instance, is not a real live take, as might have been hoped, but the exact studio mix of the song as first heard on The Sky's Gone Out, and the same applies to ʽZiggy Stardustʼ (the single version). A bit of a cheat there, but at least it is compensated for by featuring the only live version of ʽSwing The Heartacheʼ in official existence — no wonder they named the entire album after it, as it is clearly the major highlight of the package, with Ash doing his best to retain and, if possible, enhance the industrial sonic night­mare of the original.

Other minor surprises include ʽPoison Penʼ, a muscular dark funk workout almost completely de­pendent on bass/drum interplay as Haskins and David J box each other to death in a sweaty three-minute match; and a cover of the old garage classic ʽNight Timeʼ by The Strangeloves — neither suited too well for Bauhaus' usual image nor giving them an adequate opportunity to change it, but raising the bar on unpredictability, which is always good for any band locked into a stereo­type. As for the predictable inclusions, everything is played with the expected verve, but nothing is superior to the studio versions, for reasons already discussed previously. But at least the sound quality is better than on the «regular» live albums.

Serious fans will need to own this if only for all the «rarities» — casual ones might want to give it an uninterrupted spin or two if only to marvel at how a band, over such a short period, can sound in so many different ways, yet always remain the same at heart. We have basic rock'n'roll, funk, lounge jazz, glam rock, post-punk, industrial, even some acoustic waltzing and old-time garage, but all of these things are given the Murphy/Ash treatment of implosive vocals and ex­plosive guitars, and it neutralizes the whole package into three years from the life of an obnoxious, but impossibly smart and perversely attractive Evil Clown. The very fact that the album offers such a perspective (well, at least I've been able to formulate it somehow) leaves me no choice but to give it a thumbs up, skeptical as I usually am about all those BBC packages. But then again, the magic may not work tomorrow. It's a quantum kind of thing.

Check "Swing The Heartache" (CD) on Amazon

Bauhaus: Go Away White

BAUHAUS: GO AWAY WHITE (2008)

1) Too Much 21st Century; 2) Adrenalin; 3) Undone; 4) International Bullet Proof Talent; 5) Endless Summer Of The Damned; 6) Saved; 7) Mirror Remains; 8) Black Stone Heart; 9) The Dog's A Vapour; 10) Zikir.

Was there any sense in Bauhaus reuniting, this one last time (or so they insist, at least), to write up and produce a brand new studio album? A reunion tour for nostalgic reasons is one thing, but the band as a creative unit was so definitively tied in to the early Eighties, it is almost impossible to imagine how they could have made up for all that lost time. It's not as if, during their relatively short career, Bauhaus showed no will for or capacity of evolving — it's just that they didn't have the time to completely break out of the stereotypes, and a 2008 album that would have had to pick up from where Burning From The Inside had left us twenty-five years earlier might easily have been a misguided embarrassment — curious, perhaps, but embarrassing all the same.

Indeed, when Go Away White made its first rounds, some of the reviews were mighty skeptical — comparing the band to a «stately stone mausoleum», for instance, not particularly relevant, not to mention necessary, in the 21st century. A moot argument, that, for if the 21st century did not need stately stone mausolea, all of them would have been demolished long ago anyway. In fact, the band itself takes care of that argument right away: the very first track is ʽToo Much 21st Cen­turyʼ, on which Murphy complains that "they all wanna be something better", and that there is "too much fake... too much to take". Not a particularly fresh or original complaint, but one to which I can always relate, and delivered with so much energy and conviction that the listener has to take it seriously. Bauhaus have returned to take one last look at this world, decide that it ain't worthy, and then go away forever, like the Angel of Bethesda, appropriately photographed from the back for the spooky album sleeve.

But when they do take that one last look, they do not take it quite the same way as they used to. Self-produced as usual, the album does make use of improvements in technology — the mix is crisper, subtler, more aurally satisfying than on any old Bauhaus record, with each of Ash's over­dubs, effects, atmospheric layers etc. perfectly discernible, and Haskins' drums retain their gothic sternness without having to depend on epoch-bound electronic enhancements (although, where they find it more to the song's benefit, the drums are still electronic, especially when they drift into mystical atmosphere, e. g. on ʽThe Dog's A Vapourʼ). Another difference is that Ash has de­veloped a taste for distortion, and many of the riffs that push the songs forward have a brawny crrrrunch that was not at all typical of early Bauhaus, with the exception of a few special show-stoppers like ʽStigmata Martyrʼ. ʽToo Much 21st Centuryʼ, in fact, kicks off with a rumbling riff that borders on heavy metal (one tone lower and that'd be it), and ʽInternational Bullet Proof Ta­lentʼ rocks as hard as if they'd let the Young brothers guest star — again, not something you'd want to directly associate with «classic» Bauhaus.

Comparisons aside, though, it mostly works. Murphy's voice alone, retaining all of its tombstone solemnity of yore and even lowering it just a wee bit more due to age reasons, is enough to make one suspect that these guys, or at least their frontman, are still living in the past, but they succeed in making this «peek from the grave» thing into an interesting experience. The first half of the al­bum is, in its essence, almost completely sarcastic — instead of plunging you into a phantasma­goric setting à la ʽBela Lugosi's Deadʼ or revving you up for breakneck dancing with the spirits à la ʽIn The Flat Fieldʼ, Murphy uses the potential of his musicians to grin and jeer at the uncon­scious evil-making of the modern world. This prevents the songs from becoming too haunting or en­snaring, but helps enhance their intelligence quotient.

ʽAdrenalinʼ, for instance, is far from the best song the band has ever come up with, but its superimposition of bubbling-buzzing high-pitched guitar and distorted bass over Murphy's sar­cas­tic lyrics about how «adrenaline» (in this modern world of ours) is the answer to all the problems is one of the smartest ideas in Bauhaus history. And when they throw in a one-finger-on-the-pia­no bit in the middle of the song, it is almost like a tribute to John Cale and his production of ʽI Wanna Be Your Dogʼ — a hidden (unintentional?) reference to those heroes of long ago who, too, found themselves stuck in the ambiguous position of enjoying the temptations of the modern world and hating them at the same time.

As the album progresses, though, the sarcastic riff-rockers become fewer in numbers and eventu­ally give way to atmospherics — beginning with the psychedelic oratorio of ʽSavedʼ (where the state of being «saved» is made equivalent with «unconscious») and reaching its culmination with the final double-punch of ʽThe Dog's A Vapourʼ and ʽZikirʼ. The first of these is unquestionably the highest point of the album, a complex, multi-layered midnight concoction with Ash and Mur­phy at their very, very best. When the sirens and banshees make their major strike at 4:12 into the song, it produces the eeriest, most jump-starting effect since ʽSwing The Heartacheʼ did some­thing similar (but on a much humbler sonic scale: ʽThe Dog's A Vapourʼ, in comparison, would be on the level of Mahlerian polyphony).

The fact that this is a «Bauhaus»-type record indeed, and not just a combination of whatever the individual musicians were doing at the time, may be seen from the fact that Murphy's Islamic (more precisely, Sufi) adherence is mostly saved until the last track, ʽZikirʼ, a three-minute-long atmospheric fadeout that reflects his past experiments with Turkish music, but does not fling them too abruptly in the listener's face. It is, indeed, quite impressive that, despite the huge artis­tic differences that continued to accumulate between Peter and the rest of the band, and despite some hard times that they had to endure together in the studio, they were able to bring the project to completion and release the record — a little less tolerance, and none of this would happen. As it is, Go Away White is clearly not the record by which this band will be remembered in history, but it is an adequate, respectable, and enjoyable epilog. One of the worst things about Burning From The Inside was that ʽHopeʼ as the final Bauhaus song was as confusing and fake as it could be: it had to take them a quarter century to rectify that mistake, but better late than never, and for that alone, Go Away White would already be eligible for a thumbs up. As it happens, it never once makes a false move, even if only a few of the moves it makes deserve the status of a «classic Bauhaus moment», ʽThe Dog's A Vapourʼ being transparently the No. 1 candidate.

PS. Funny bit of trivia: out of several indignant one-star reviews of this album on Amazon, at least one explicitly states that «this is not Bauhaus, this has more of a Love and Rockets feel to it» and at least another one states with the same forcefulness that «I have not heard Bauhaus, I have heard a Peter Murphy solo album here». Count me happy on this.

Check "Go Away White" (CD) on Amazon

Bauhaus: Gotham

BAUHAUS: GOTHAM (1999)

1) Double Dare; 2) In The Flat Field; 3) God In An Alcove; 4) In Fear Of Fear; 5) Hollow Hills; 6) Kick In The Eye; 7) Terror Couple Kill Colonel; 8) Silent Hedges; 9) Severance; 10) Boys; 11) She's In Parties; 12) The Passion Of Lovers; 13) Dark Entries; 14) Telegram Sam; 15) Ziggy Stardust; 16) Bela Lugosi's Dead; 17) All We Ever Wanted Was Everything; 18) Spirit; 19) Severance [studio version].

In 1998, Bauhaus took the world of mascara by surprise — it may have seemed to everyone that Murphy's ways were no longer compatible with the rest of the band (who were doing fine for themselves, under the name of «Love And Rockets»), but time either heals your wounds or emp­ties your pockets, or both, and, anyway, somehow in 1998 the original Bauhaus did come to­gether — and in quite an imposing manner, too. The «punny» album title may seem to indicate that they have finally agreed to settle into the appropriate pigeon hole, but on this particular occa­sion, since the concerts were indeed played in NYC (September 9-10, 1998, at the Hammerstein Ballroom), the title is really perfect for the occasion.

Moreover, the first few minutes of Gotham are suspenseful and breathtaking. Small nuclear blasts of bass rumble set against excited audience screams, gradually increasing in intensity until Ash properly opens up the feedback barrel and sets people flying from their seats — then David J distorts the bass riff of ʽDouble Dareʼ to living-hell status, and finally, Murphy crawls out of the shadows to sing a seriously amended set of lyrics... which is where the fun starts getting colder, since his stage antics had dwindled over two decades, and the scenic delivery is professional, technically perfect, and spirited, but not as bold or exuberant as it used to be.

From there on, it is hit after hit, classic after classic, expertly delivered, meticulously captured, thrilling for the audience of the Hammerstein, and, as it happens with all of Bauhaus' live recor­dings, not particularly rewarding for the casual fan. The tracklist predictably venerates the first record, respects the second, acknowledges the third, and ignores the fourth (with the equally pre­dictable exception of ʽShe's In Partiesʼ) — one surprising omission is ʽStigmata Martyrʼ, a song that always used to be the major highlight of the show, but was inexplicably not performed or omitted from the final recording; and one surprising inclusion is ʽSpiritʼ, heavily rearranged and done largely as a group harmony chant, with Ash's phased acoustic guitar as the only instrument and the entire "we love our audience" part completely melodically re-written so that it now sounds much less ironic than it used to.

The «dark horse» of the album is a cover of ʽSeveranceʼ, a Dead Can Dance cover from 1988's The Serpent's Egg — true to the spirit of Dead Can Dance, Bauhaus, too, do this thing as an at­mospheric mood piece, but neither the live version nor the studio recording, tacked on to the end as a bonus track, manage to be as intoxicating as the band they set out to cover. It is quite natural for Bauhaus to regard Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard as their «stepchildren», what with their first album coming out next year after Bauhaus' demise, as if they inherited that spirit, but in rea­lity the two bands are extremely different, and their material does not crossbreed that easily. Still, a curious intersection here, and if it helps fans of one band to get interested in the other, we will respect the gesture for its promotional value at least.

Other than that, Gotham simply shows that the band had never lost it, or if it did, it found it as soon as it stated a desire to do so. As a bona fide live overview of the band's entire career, recor­ded with excellent quality and featuring the band in top form, it works very well; as a candidate for «Bauhaus' best live album», it does not hold a candle to Press The Eject, mainly be­cause of the absence of ʽStigmata Martyrʼ and because Peter Murphy is not so young and not so crazy any more; as an important historic document witnessing the «restoration of a legend», it has its unde­niable value, and even a certain amount of thrill. And it never hurts to own yet another version of ʽBela Lugosi's Deadʼ — the bats always seem to scurry and shuffle around the ceiling in a musi­cal configuration that is quite different from last time. If anything, it helps not to play those old Bauhaus numbers for so long — gives you an incentive for reinventing some of them a little bit in the meantime.

Bauhaus: Rest In Peace: The Final Concert

BAUHAUS: REST IN PEACE: THE FINAL CONCERT (1983 / 1992)

1) Burning From The Inside; 2) In Fear Of Fear; 3) Terror Couple Kill Colonel; 4) The Spy In The Cab; 5) King­dom's Coming; 6) She's In Parties; 7) Antonin Artaud; 8) King Volcano; 9) Passion Of Lovers; 10) Slice Of Life; 11) In Heaven; 12) Dancing; 13) Hollow Hills; 14) Stigmata Martyr; 15) Kick In The Eye; 16) Dark Entries; 17) Double Dare; 18) In The Flat Field; 19) Boys; 20) God In An Alcove; 21) Hair Of The Dog; 22) Bela Lugosi's Dead.

This certainly cannot be a long review, since most of what needs to be said about the live avatar of Bauhaus has already been squeezed out for the review of Press The Eject... Formal info is as follows: Rest In Peace is a faithful recording of Bauhaus' last concert, played at the Hammer­smith Palais in London on July 5, 1983, one week prior to the official release of Burning From The Inside and fifteen years before all four members would play again. The show itself, al­though captured on tape, remained in the vaults for almost a decade, before it was finally released on two CDs in 1992 — and the appropriate title «rest in peace» actually reproduces the words of David J, spoken at the very end of the show, once the final echoes of ʽBela Lugosiʼ have died down: most of the fans present, unaware of the band's suicidal plans, never figured out what that properly meant until it was too late.

The large delay between recording and release is understandable: first, it seemed pointless at the time to put out two live albums in such a brief time interval, and second, the sound quality is highly questionable — almost as if they were taping this as a personal memento rather than a po­tential commercial product or even historical document. Studio or live, Bauhaus is one of those bands that draws its power from atmosphere and sonic nuances rather than particular chord changes, so listening to a poor-sound-quality Bauhaus album falls in the same category as wat­ching a black-and-white version of Snow White. For those who still have all the hits ringing and reverberating in their ears, subconscious will do the trick and restore the missing colors, but God forbid you ever fall upon Rest In Peace as your introduction to the band.

The setlist is relatively predictable: in the first part, the band largely concentrates on recent mate­rial from the still-unreleased Burning, and later on, they fall back upon the classics with a ven­geance — the encore is almost half an hour long, reminding us of just how fruitful the short ca­reer of Bauhaus was in the first place, if they need so much time to properly summarize it. On the other hand, they do need some extra time to include a few rarities: the distorted post-punk-rocker ʽBoysʼ (originally the B-side to ʽBela Lugosi's Deadʼ) and, oddest of all, a prayer-style, nearly accappella (accompanied only by a thin pseudo-church organ melody) rendition of David Lynch's ʽIn Heavenʼ from Eraserhead — come to think of it, Eraserhead and Bauhaus must have come out of the same womb, even if it took Murphy and Ash several years to realize that ("we got the words wrong", Murphy admits in the middle of the performance, which must imply they did not have too much time learning them).

Altogether, the show was certainly done on the level, but the wooden sound quality does drag it down, and the relative lack of surprises means that even hardcore fans will probably not want to sit through the whole thing more than once. Unless, that is, the hardcore fan should happen to be a major specific admirer of Burning From The Inside — this is the only live Bauhaus album where you are going to get so many non-Murphy-targeted songs in one place (this covers most of the difference from the post-reunion Gotham performance). For me, however, that's a minus.

Check "Rest In Peace" (CD) on Amazon

Bauhaus: Burning From The Inside

BAUHAUS: BURNING FROM THE INSIDE (1983)

1) She's In Parties; 2) Antonin Artaud; 3) Wasp; 4) King Volcano; 5) Who Killed Mr. Moonlight; 6) Slice Of Life; 7) Honeymoon Croon; 8) Kingdom's Coming; 9) Burning From The Inside; 10) Hope.

Considering who we are talking about here, the phrase «nothing predicted a bleak future for Bauhaus in 1983» sounds rather silly — this is one band that could always do with some bleak future, the bleaker the better. Let me try and rephrase that: by early 1983, Bauhaus were going stronger than ever, and there is no telling how many successful results this Murphy/Ash colla­boration could yield throughout the decade. But fate commanded that, just as the band entered the studio to begin sessions for their fourth LP, Murphy fell ill with a real heavy (some say life-threa­tening) case of pneumonia — and the remaining members actually had the nerve to carry on re­cording without him, even to the point of Ash and David J singing lead vocals on several tracks. Whatever tensions between the vocalist and the instrumentalists there were up to that point were instantly magnified tenfold, and the band played their last show at the Hammersmith on July 5, one week prior to the release of Burning From The Inside.

Tension, dissent, and various forms of cracks within a band are not always detrimental — quite often, this actually stirs and freshens creative juices, and there is nothing like a heavy splash of healthy hatred to produce great art, anyway. Unfortunately, this is not what happened here — with the partial absence of Murphy, Bauhaus... well, it just isn't Bauhaus any more. Apart from a few trademark songs, Ash and David J push the band into softer, more «melodic» territory that draws its inspiration from dark folk and Kurt Weill rather than Joy Division. It may be tasteful and relatively interesting territory, but it puts The Bauhaus Beast to sleep (and it sometimes puts me to sleep, which is not good at all).

There is really only one classic number here, which accordingly opens the album and was also released as its only single — ʽShe's In Partiesʼ has everything you could expect from a Bauhaus song: dark «glam-hellish» delivery from Peter, going into a nostalgic trance for the glitz, the vanity, and the noir of the classic age of Hollywood; a simple, nasty, unforgettable riff from Ash, even­tually mutating into a series of heavily treated swoops and meltdowns, as if somebody were pouring acid on the amps; and a gloomy solo dance by the bassline for a coda. The song is so good that its very presence already sort of redeems the album, so that the ensuing disappointment is not so disappointing — then again, it is hard not to be disappointed when you slowly under­stand that nothing else here comes close to matching the dark power of its opening number.

Most of the Murphy-less stuff is what I'd call «for the fans». The boys mean well and have no in­tention of simply pelting us with filler: ʽWho Killed Mr. Moonlightʼ, for instance, is a carefully thought-out epitaphy to starry-eyed romance, a piano / organ-dominated melancholic ballad on how "someone shot nostalgia in the back, someone shot our innocence". Problem is... it's boring. They do not seem to be able to do anything interesting with these instruments, let alone the saxo­phone doodling that Ash is quietly arranging in the background. It's basically just five minutes of fluffy atmospheric wallowing that is neither too pretty nor too sad to activate the emotions. It's just something that is not-theirs-to-do.

Nor am I too impressed with the half-drunk, half-tribal waltzing of ʽKing Volcanoʼ (tries to achieve a phantasmagoric effect but fails), or with the acoustic folk balladry of ʽKingdom's Co­mingʼ (monotonous, instantly forgettable); ʽSlice Of Lifeʼ is a little better because Ash's vocals at least match the nervous tension of the instrumental melody, and this is the only track on which he succeeds in building up some maniacal paranoia — still, Murphy would have handled that so much better. Really, none of these songs has any genuine staying power. In addition, it is a little weird that, all of a sudden, without Murphy in the studio, Ash so abruptly decided to place his faith in the acoustic guitar: he is not a master picker, and his greatest talent was always in the sheer number of different effects and impressions he could derive from electricity.

Things do not always work out fine with Murphy, either: case in point is the title track, which starts out nice enough, with cruel, brain-melting riffs and pleasantly extremist abrupt jumps from dirge-goth to «punk-funk» and convenient lyrics about "razor weeds" that reach up to one's knees, but then somehow gets stuck in a five-minute repetitive coda that annoys rather than enchants, as if your vinyl got caught in the groove for some purely mechanical reason. Those five minutes, I doubt it not for a second, were clearly thrown in to fill up space: there must be more atmospheric ways of getting the message of "I don't see you anymore" into your listeners' heads than this.

Finally, what sort of a Bauhaus record finishes with a song called ʽHopeʼ? Uplifting acoustic gui­tars? Hippie-style choral vocals? "Your mornings will be brighter, break the line, tear up rules, make the most of a million times no"? Who do they think they are — Jefferson Airplane? Time to call it a day, boys; I have no more interest in hearing this from my Bauhaus than in listening to the Beach Boys doing hip-hop or to Elton John singing opera arias.

Of course, the album is not really a «sell out»: it is simply plagued by circumstances beyond ar­tistic control, and a failed attempt to compensate for these circumstances with a series of experi­ments that downplay the band's traditional strengths and lay open their weaknesses. Many fans are still willing to accept it, particularly since ʽShe's In Partiesʼ is such a strong opener that it does set the tone for the entire record, and that's quite alright. My point is simply that Burning From The Inside is «diluted Bauhaus», and that I'd rather go listen to R.E.M. than to ʽKingdom's Co­mingʼ, or to Peter Hammill rather than to ʽWho Killed Mr. Moonlightʼ — why settle for anything but the best, after all, when history has already provided you with such an ample choice?

Check "Burning From The Inside" (MP3) on Amazon

Bauhaus: Press The Eject And Give Me The Tape

BAUHAUS: PRESS THE EJECT AND GIVE ME THE TAPE (1982)

1) In The Flat Field; 2) Rose Garden Funeral Of Sores; 3) Dancing; 4) The Man With The X-Ray Eyes; 5) Bela Lu­gosi's Dead; 6) The Spy In The Cab; 7) Kick In The Eye; 8) In Fear Of Fear; 9) Hollow Hills; 10) Stigmata Martyr; 11) Dark Entries; 12) Terror Couple Kill Colonel*; 13) Double Dare*; 14*) In The Flat Field; 15*) Hair Of The Dog; 16*) Of Lillies And Remains; 17*) Waiting For The Man.

Visually, Bauhaus live were not vastly different from any other punk / post-punk act of the era — their act was much less theatrical than the music would suggest — but in terms of sound, it was primarily on the stage that they played out their «goth rock» reputation in earnest. The setlist con­centrates on the darkest songs in the catalog, and the towering centerpiece is ʽBela Lugosi's Deadʼ, longer, grander, and weightier than anything else on here — nine minutes of grave macabrity that Alice Cooper would probably have rejected for being too pretentious and humorless, but for Bauhaus, it is their life, as Murphy gets to get so heavily into character and Ash gets to scatter round his entire bag of guitar tricks, imitating every single variation of a bat wing flap on his in­strument and feeling quite at home.

On the whole, the live Bauhaus experience has little reason to be experienced outside an actual theater — the songs are not significantly modified from their studio bases, usually retaining the structures, the tempos, and the general dynamics. But yes, if you need to hear it from me, both Murphy and Ash do behave more wildly on stage: Murphy becomes a bit more of a screamer, and Ash allows himself to fool around with even more feedback effects. So if you decide that songs like ʽStigmata Martyrʼ rock harder and blow up more nerve cells here than in the studio version, I am not going to argue — I just happen to find the difference sort of negligible, and even more negligible on the short dance-oriented stuff from Mask, such as ʽDancingʼ or ʽIn Fear Of Fearʼ, where I was almost afraid at once that they'd simply put some audience noises over studio takes (well, you can't blame me for not memorizing every studio nuance of those tracks).

Technical notes: most of these songs were recorded in October 1981 and February 1982 in Lon­don and Liverpool, so there is predictably nothing included from The Sky's Gone Out; and, in fact, the live album itself was originally released as a bonus addition to Sky, only later gai­n­ing the status of an «autonomous» LP — initiating a rather strange tradition which eventually resul­ted in Bauhaus having as many live albums out as they have studio ones. Furthermore, the CD re-release added a bunch of extra tracks recorded at a December 1981 show in Paris, with ʽDouble Dareʼ as a particular highlight for those who love the Murphy scream, but the tracks also have significantly poorer sound quality. The most curious, and the least professionally recorded, inc­lusion is that of a Manchester performance where they join forces with Nico on a delightfully (atrociously?) chaotic rendition of the VU's ʽWaiting For The Manʼ.

On the whole, I would probably recommend skipping this, but apparently, the Old Vic London show from 1982 had also been videotaped, so this is a good bet to check out the young Murphy in his prime, belly-dancing and all, while Ash and his supercool mohawk are weaving guitar rings around him (really piss-poor lighting job, though, based on the bits I have seen). But as for me, I do not care much for that early 1980s visual stylistics anyway, and for those who think that Bau­haus are better heard than seen, Press The Eject will not be of much use.

Check "Press The Eject And Give Me The Tape" (CD) on Amazon
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Bauhaus: The Sky's Gone Out

BAUHAUS: THE SKY'S GONE OUT (1982)

1) Third Uncle; 2) Silent Hedges; 3) In The Night; 4) Swing The Heartache; 5) Spirit; 6) The Three Shadows, Part 1; 7) The Three Shadows, Part 2; 8) The Three Shadows, Part 3; 9) All We Ever Wanted Was Everything; 10) Exquisite Corpse.

With Bauhaus now firmly marketed as a «goth» band, their third album seems to have been seen by many critics and fans alike as straying too far away from a formula to which the band had ac­tually never ever subscribed in the first place. Essentially, The Sky's Gone Out is frequently ac­cused of being too meandering, too scattered, too unsure of where to go. But if you ask me, I much prefer this «insecurity» to the way-too-predictably-monotonous formula of Mask — just how much more «dark dance music» does one really need?

This is, indeed, the peak of Murphy and Ash's experimentalism: not always succeeding, perhaps, but not afraid, either, of risking an occasional miss among a bunch of successful hits. The idea to open the proceedings with a cover of Brian Eno's nearly decade-old rocker ʽThird Uncleʼ, in par­ticular, is brilliant — Bauhaus' transparent link to Joy Division had always obscured their earlier roots, but they are really much closer in spirit to the «morose glam theater» of early Roxy Music and early solo Eno, and they slice through the insanely fast drone chords of ʽThird Uncleʼ like butter: not adding much to the original, I guess, but perfectly capturing its joint vibe of lunacy and irony — and, although Ash's technique does not fully match Phil Manzanera's, this is barely noticeable, because the spirit of that original solo is reproduced to a tee.

None of the originals come close in terms of general frenzy, but they do not intend to: ʽThird Uncleʼ is just a benevolent warm-up, followed by one «big freeze» that comes in several different models. If you expected to be able to dance the night away, clad in black cloacks and mascara shades, you will be disappointed. But stepping away from pop rhythms allows them more space for invention — with a little patience, it becomes obvious that every song has something to offer, and a few of them have something incredible to offer.

Actually, when I use the term «incredible», I am mainly referring to ʽSwing The Heartacheʼ — a track like no other in the Bauhaus catalog. This is the Ash show all the way: after a long, intri­guing set-up of electronic howling, he kicks in with such a nasty loud riff that I can't help being reminded of Black Sabbath and ʽIron Manʼ — that «earth ripped apart» effect! — and from there on, the whole song becomes a test pad for all sorts of guitar madness, including a repetitive «whistling» ef­fect that may easily wreck an unstable nervous system. Altogether, there are enough cool musical ideas in this song to fuel a small album, but they all work together towards a common purpose: drive you right out of your head. (And I'm pretty sure that will happen the mi­nute you turn the volume up real loud in your headphones).

The band is being more merciful to the listener on such classics as ʽSilent Hedgesʼ (featuring the album's meanest bassline) and ʽIn The Nightʼ, which is lyrically a song about suicide, but musi­cally more of a pissed-off «slow punk» rocker, drastically speeding up towards the end. ʽSpiritʼ is a portentous anthem — Bauhaus' own idea of a ʽWe Will Rock Youʼ, culminating in an endless loop of "we love our audience, we love our audience!", clearly written for the fans but, conside­ring that Murphy's image does not require «loving» anybody, coming off as ironic all the same. The best thing about ʽSpiritʼ, anyway, is how they manage to combine an essentially rockabilly bass line with a folk-themed melody — somehow, it works.

Experimentation hits hardest on the second side of the album, especially with the three-part suite ʽThe Three Shadowsʼ, its first movement purely instrumental and atmospheric, its second one a melancholic funeral waltz, its third one a short «folk-punk» coda with a little Irish dance flavor. I guess this description alone helps understand why the «scattered» nature of the album was so con­fusing, but, really, this odd mix of different elements should hardly be any more confusing than, say, Kate Bush's much-revered suite on the second half of Hounds Of Love — it's just that the «point» of it may not be for everyone. Murphy's lyrics hardly make any sense, and sometimes seem drastically underworked ("but I... will always... exist... because... I always... exist" — nice logical chain out there), but it is the music, not the words, that matter, and there is a clear emotio­nal link between all three parts, from the somber ricocheting guitar licks of the intro right down to the slightly dissonant piano / fiddle duet on the outro.

What may really count as scattered is the last track — ʽExquisite Corpseʼ is more like a collection of loosely, if at all, connected snippets than anything else, as if, having recorded 35 minutes worth of material, they simply decided to cram all their remaining ideas into the other five, re­gardless of how well they could be sewn together. Indeed, the coda, especially coming right after the lovely acoustic balladeering of ʽAll We Ever Wantedʼ, is a bit anti-climactic: some of the snippets are okay, but I was really looking forward to some grand conclusion after all the freaky imagination outbursts. Still, that's a small price of disappointment to be paid for such an overall satisfactory experience.

In any case, do not follow the naysayers — The Sky's Gone Out still captures Bauhaus at the top of their game, and just because it refuses to conform to the clichés of «goth» does not mean that these guys do not know what they're doing. Okay, so they probably do not know what they're doing, but they're doing it fine anyway: not even on Flat Fields has Ash been more thoughtful about his instrument, or more lucky about putting those thoughts in practice.

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Bauhaus: Mask

BAUHAUS: MASK (1981)

1) Hair Of The Dog; 2) The Passion Of Lovers; 3) Of Lillies And Remains; 4) Dancing; 5) Hollow Hills; 6) Kick In The Eye; 7) In Fear Of Fear; 8) Muscle In Plastic; 9) The Man With X-Ray Eyes; 10) Mask.

This critically respected (for the most part) follow-up to Flat Fields is all right, but, for the most part, it does not add anything particularly unpredictable or even «useful» to the Bauhaus image. Formally, the band cannot be accused of slackery — they bring in occasional new instrumen­tation (keyboards, acoustic guitars, etc.), and Daniel Ash is as keen as ever to try out new guitar sounds and fuss around with studio technology. But they have a successful formula now, and they do make sure to stay well within its safe boundaries. This ensures that the album, like its prede­cessor, is cozily coherent, but there is really nothing that can be said about Mask in general that has not already been said about Flat Fields in general, so let's just chat about some of the indivi­dual songs instead — in terms of favorites and «why favorites?».

Especially because this time, it is fairly easy to choose a favorite — ʽHollow Hillsʼ is one of the band's best songs, and, for that matter, one of the tiny handful of bona fide «goth» songs in their catalog, a slow, creepy-crawly, atmospheric dirge, possibly inspired by an Arthur Machen story, whose mystical bass line is amusingly similar to the one used on Nirvana's ʽCome As You Areʼ (coincidence or was Bauhaus a closet love of Kurt's?). It is not any less theatrical than any other Bauhaus song, so one is not expected to shed sincere mournful tears for the abandoned magical hills even if «so sad, love lies there still» — but Ash's clever overdubs and sound effects still open the door to some sort of a different dimension. Never mind the witches and the goblins and Oberon, the sound of it all is much more meaningful than the literal sense.

The only other song on the album that lays more emphasis on the atmosphere than on the beat is the title track — but it is still a bit too distorted and industrialized for my tastes, especially when the fuzzy grind of the rhythm guitar gets coupled with all the backwards tapes prepared by Ash. Midway through it becomes something else, when the grind is suffocated and a paranoid medie­valistic mandolin-imitating acoustic guitar starts playing in a ʽBattle Of Evermoreʼ fashion — yet even so, it is not enough to make a satisfactory conclusion to the album, certainly not one that would overwhelm the listener like a «grand finale» is supposed to.

The remaining eight songs are all rockers, and, to a large extent, interchangeable — with few, if any, jaw-dropping melodic discoveries, and pretty much the same message throughout: «if you really have to dance or, at least, tap your foot to pop music, might as well make it dark, cool, and enigmatic». One of the songs is even called ʽDancingʼ, and its verbal listing of all the different ways to dance brings to mind a similar enterprise once carried out by Roxy Music with ʽDo The Strandʼ — yes, back when the odd pioneers of a new musical style were slyly taking the old pre-war genre of «let-me-introduce-you-to-a-new-dance» and adapting it to a whole new world of values. But in 1981, that world was already established, and here Bauhaus just sound like a bunch of not particularly convincing also-rans.

As for the songs chosen for single release, those were ʽKick In The Eyeʼ and ʽThe Passion Of Loversʼ, the former sounding like Young Americans-era funkified David Bowie with an extra touch of bass darkness laid on from the Berlin era and the latter being yet another clone of early Joy Division style; the lyrics are fairly well «gothic» ("the passion of lovers is for death" goes the refrain, after all), but the atmosphere does not even reach the creepiness level of ʽHollow Hillsʼ, let alone Joy Division themselves — Ash plays interesting guitar lines that have nothing to do with death or decay, and Murphy delivers the lyrics more like a beginning Elizabethan actor than like a person who'd really want you to consider the imminent link between love and death.

As you can probably already tell from the review, I am not too fond of this record. Where Flat Fields added something to the already well-formed world of «bleak post-punk», Mask actually allows to see better what that something was — a mask indeed, and a fairly sticky one. The heroes of Flat Fields revelled in their roles of sophisticated evil clowns, and their excitement at being let out on the stage was contagious, but already on the second album it looks like they are simply doing their job now, content with their wages and quietly sweating and stagnating under the makeup. If not for Ash and his bag of studio tricks, Mask would be gruesomely boring; as it is, it is still eminently listenable, just underwhelming. Brain-wise, the songs seem sufficiently fleshed out to deserve a minor thumbs up, but the heart finds no pleasure in most of this. (And just to make matters clear, yes, the album «rocks», but what sort of New Wave album with a war­ped, screechy guitar tone did not rock in 1981?).

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Bauhaus: In The Flat Field

BAUHAUS: IN THE FLAT FIELD (1980)

1) Double Dare; 2) In The Flat Field; 3) God In An Alcove; 4) Dive; 5) Spy In The Cab; 6) Small Talk Stinks; 7) St. Vitus Dance; 8) Stigmata Martyr; 9) Nerves; 10*) Dark Entries; 11*) Telegram Sam; 12*) Rosegarden Funeral Of Sores; 13*) Terror Couple Kill Colonel; 14*) Scopes; 15*) Untitled; 16*) God In An Alcove; 17*) Crowds.

First things first: let us get the harmful genrism crap out of the way. Wherever you go to stock up on basic information about Bauhaus, you are sure to learn that they are «the fathers of goth rock» or, at least, «counted among the progenitors of gothic rock as a genre». There is only one piece of serious evidence to back up this idiotic stereotype — namely, the name of the band's first single: ʽBela Lugosi's Deadʼ. Naturally, every band whose first song mentions Bela Lugosi, vampires, and blood, deserves to be pigeonholed as «gothic rock», but one might just as well tag The Jimi Hendrix Experience as a «folk-rock band», since their first single was a cover of ʽHey Joeʼ. (For that matter, Bauhaus' third single was a sped-up cover of T. Rex's ʽTelegram Samʼ — about as «gothic» in essence as ʽMary Had A Little Lambʼ.)

Even if we do accept «goth rock» as a legit musical genre and describe it as, well, let's say, dark, gloomy, bass-heavy, minor-key music with a lyrical and atmospheric fixation on misanthropy, death, suicide, ghosts, and red blood on white sheets, In The Flat Field, the band's first and argu­ably best album, only fits certain parts of that description. Moodwise, this brainchild of Peter Murphy's is a whole lot more cheerful than Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, from which it draws much of its inspiration — not to mention certain albums by The Doors, Lou Reed, or Nico that I could mention, all of which are far more deserving of the «early goth rock» nametag than this relatively lively, tongue-in-cheek, occasionally quite funny piece of entertainment.

In fact, if you glance at some of the original negative reviews of the record, you can sometimes see people condemning it for not living up to their expectations — "sluggish indulgence instead of hoped for goth-ness", Dave McCullough quipped in Sounds. Indulgence — for sure; sluggish — vile slander. In 1980, there was nothing sluggish about the playing style of Peter Murphy, Daniel Ash, David J, and Kevin Haskins. On the contrary, like all those fresh, young, seriously idealistic New Wave outfits, particularly those based in such centers of trendiness as London, they were determined to prove that they could combine new meaningful musical ideas with the verve and energy of their glam-rock and punk rock idols.

Just like the Smiths, Bauhaus' image is generated at the intersection of «the eccentric vocalist» (Peter Murphy) and «the inventive guitarist» (Daniel Ash). Of those two, Murphy is the less in­teresting component: he adds little to the accumulated legacy of Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, and Ian Curtis, and his trademark gloomy baritone has fairly little emotional range or depth. He is a com­petent singer, and his singing style matches the moods and the messages of the songs fairly well — you couldn't really imagine somebody like Elvis Costello singing these songs instead, or if you could, you shouldn't — and other than a couple cases of potentially overlong overscreaming, he never does much to irritate the listener; that's about as high as my praise can go.

The guitar playing of Daniel Ash, though, is an entirely different matter. Like most of the pro­minent guitarists of the New Wave era, he tends to eschew solos, but the style is by no means minimalistic — on the contrary, it is ambitiously synthetic, with little regard for any pre-estab­lished «genre rules». ʽDouble Dareʼ, for instance, opens the album with a few nasty feedback blasts, out of which quickly emerges an even nastier growling «industrial metal» riff. Then the title track, in contrast, is all based on distorted scratchy droning, in loving memory of Lou Reed, Phil Manzanera, and Tom Verlaine. ʽGod In An Alcoveʼ updates the old garage sound, where folksy arpeggios alternate with bluesy block chords and psycho trills (and to top it off, Dave J sometimes makes his bass adopt a disco pattern — what a nuthouse, eh?). On ʽSpy In The Cabʼ, he plays a depressing dirge, while the limp, but arrogant shuffle of ʽSmall Talk Stinksʼ could have easily been picked up by the likes of Marc Ribot for a Tom Waits album.

Nothing on Flat Field really hits harder, though, than the looped metal riff doubling the already established bass melody at 0:50 into ʽStigmata Martyrʼ. The song is a masterpiece of tongue-in-cheek «religious horror» in music — all due to the expressiveness of Ash's guitar, imitating all sorts of physical (and spiritual?) pain on an almost literal level. There is no real horror here (as in, «vivid musical projection of real life horror or the uncomfortably dark depths of one's soul»), it is all sheer theatrics, but it still perturbs the senses in some way. Even as a cheap thrill, songs like these show that Bauhaus are really onto something.

It may well be so that the original critics were confused — In The Flat Field is, indeed, too flashy, extravagant, and even «cheery» to genuinely convey any dread, doom, and despair (you do know for sure that Peter Murphy is no Ian Curtis, and that the rope is not a solution), but if it does not genuinely do that, what the hell is it here for in the first place? These songs make very little ideological sense; Murphy's lyrics, at best, convey a feeling of stupid adolescent decadence; and the band's being all over the place without firmly indicating where they do belong disorients the potential reviewer into a state of irritated hatred.

But get over it, potential reviewer. So what if these arrogant kids have reduced your precious Joy Division to the sarcastic-vaudevillian frame­work of a dark rock cabaret? Surely there might be an empty space left for this stuff somewhere on of your empty shelves. And there is really no logic in worshipping Tom Waits, who did much the same thing with his favorite types of music, and despising Bauhaus — who, at least, never took themselves too seriously. In the end, In The Flat Field may not «mean» much, but it is inventive, experimental, catchy, energetic, and fun, right down to the slow build-up (love those suspense-generating tick-tocking keyboards straight out of the local torture chamber) and massive explosion of ʽNervesʼ. Subsequently, I would like to give the album a thumbs up right now, and attempt to explain what particular major changes for the better it introduced to my life later, once I have enjoyed those changes to their fullest.

PS: Any newcomer to the band would do well to pick up the expanded reissue. For some reason, it does not include ʽBela Lugosi's Deadʼ, but it does include the rest of their early singles, inclu­ding the brilliant ʽTerror Couple Kill Colonelʼ (dedicated to the murder of Paul Bloomquist, with a delicately crafted folk-pop guitar part from Ash, and with the chorus always misheard by me as «pterodactyl kill carnal», adding even further to the mystery) and the insanely accelerated ʽTele­gram Samʼ; also, ʽCrowdsʼ is a romantic piano ballad that should be owned by every admirer of Paul Murphy's (not that I'd ever like to have a hand in convincing anybody to become an admirer of Paul Murphy's, but if you are an admirer, you do have to hear this little Peter Hammill-style depressed confessional), and ʽRosegarden Funeral Of Soresʼ is probably the only song on the entire CD that would indeed be fit for playing at a Goth-themed funeral. (Particularly if you wan­ted to raise the chances of the deceased person rising from the dead, that is — it is rather painful to have to endure Murphy's hysterical roaring at the end of the initially calm track).

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