WILD BIRDS FLOCK TO ME

I’m not big on musical nostalgia.  Or maybe I never grew up.  That’s a distinct possibility.  Music is powerful stuff, and the best of it never really loses its potency.  Have I heard Sympathy for the Devil or When the Levee Breaks or Love is Like Oxygen a thousand times by now?  Quite possibly, and they still hit me hard every time.  I probably still own about 95% of the music I’ve bought since I scored myself a copy of Cheap Trick’s Dream Police back in ’79.  Good music stays with you, period.

So I love re-issues.  Clean the music up a little, find some interesting rarities to throw in and sweeten the package, why the hell not?  The new box set of Peter Murphy’s first five solo releases, cleverly called Peter Murphy 5 Albums, is no exception.  For the most part, these are the albums that establish his post-Bauhaus legacy, his emergence from pretentious and ham-fisted Gothmonger into a deeper, more spiritual musical style.

Should the World Fail to Fall Apart, his debut, is probably the weakest of the set, only because of some badly dated 80s dance/funk sounds scattered throughout it.  When he focuses on strong (non-dance) music and intelligent lyrics, and moves away from the dreaded fretless bass, he succeeds admirably.

Love Hysteria is a revelation.  Like the rest of the albums here, it’s varied, moody, passionate and, ultimately, uplifting.  It gets bonus points by being his first true knockout solo release, and by leaving the 80s gimmicks dead on the studio floor.

Deep is the one that broke him in America, of course.  Another solid album - a few Bauhaus throwbacks here and there, but nothing to get too worried about and, more importantly , Cuts You Up, which is still amazing almost 29 years later.

Holy Smoke is Murphy’s red-headed stepchild album.  It’s the one that failed to follow up on Deep’s success, but that’s not the artist’s fault.  It came out right in the middle of the first wave of Grunge-mania, so it’s nuances and textures never really had a chance (much like the Church’s masterpiece Priest = Aura, another truly excellent album totally out of step with the music scene in 1992).  The music is starting to feel familiar hear, some of it’s a little middle-of-the-road, but it doesn’t seem to me to be anywhere near as bad as its reputation suggests.  I’ll take it over Stone Temple Pilots any day, and the ironically titled Hit Song alone is worth more than almost anything else that came out in ’92.

And then Cascade in ’95.   In two words, HOLY FUCK.  This is everything great about Murphy’s solo work multiplied, magnified and amplified.  Almost every song here is the best song on the album.  It’s haunting and gorgeous.  It charges forward.  It lingers.  It broods and it soars.  If you want to end your retrospective box set on a high point, this is how you do it.