Saturday, January 28, 2017

LESS THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS




It’s Bauhaus, of course.  A friend of mine had a few of their albums back in high school, I just COULD NOT get into them.  “Bela Lugosi” was good fun, but the majority of their stuff just sounded like atonal, herky- jerky pretentiousness to me.  And I liked the Residents, dammit!

Someone in college played “Ball of Confusion” for me, and I was stunned that it was ¾ of Bauhaus.  Love and Rockets were awesome.  Well, their first 3 albums were.  The breakthrough album with “So Alive” that kind of partially sucked.  Some of it was quite good, though.  Sweet F.A. didn’t impress me in the slightest, either, but I dug the long, meandering trance stuff on Hot Trip to Heaven.  After that, they lost it totally.

Also heard Tones on Tail in college for the first time, and they too were totally excellent.  And they had the added bonus of a very short career, so everything they did was great, and you were left wanting more instead of wincing at an L&R-style tedious decline.

And goddammit if Peter Murphy wasn’t ALSO excellent post-Bauhaus!  Cascade is my fave, followed by the strange and creaky Dust, but most of his solo stuff has been fairly quality work.  And “Cuts You Up”?  What a kick-ass fucking song.

And so I periodically think I must be wrong, and I go back to check out some old Bauhaus, but no they still leave me cold.  And, son of a bitch, I WANT to like them!  Oh well..




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