After their first resurrection in 1998, it seemed the godfathers of goth rock were finally in a coffin somewhere. Just like Dracula though, this undead band is one that’s impossible to kill off without that lucky wooden stake. Go Away White is Bauhaus’ first—and last, according to their website—album since their initial breakup just before the release Burning from the Inside in 1983.
During the recording of that album, lead singer Peter Murphy was stricken with near-fatal pneumonia, leaving the rest of the band to take the recording reins. As a result, Burning had a strange compilation aura surrounding it. It foreshadowed the fracture points coming in the future, with Murphy, Daniel Ash (guitarist, saxophone), David J. (bassist) and Kevin Haskins (drums, synthesizers) all engaging in solo projects. The undead triumvirate of Bauhaus alumni (minus Murphy) also formed the mildly popular Love and Rockets, but fans have been itching for more Bauhaus in the intervening years.
Their unholy union of dub, rock, new wave, and Peter Murphy’s lyrical post-punk gloom made the Northampton band’s first EP Bela Lugosi’s Dead and the In the Flat Field LP a filthy mirror trained on midnight menace and skulking bloodlust. Each subsequent release felt more and more like a pale, emaciated vampire lurking around his nocturnal kingdom, grasping for new blood. With Go Away White, Bauhaus hook their old styles into the revitalizing IV of solo efforts; most recognizably Love and Rockets.
Right from the start, Murphy’s raucous lyrical rail against our power/wealth gripped culture on “Too Much 21st Century” blasts what you know to be true about Bauhaus to bits with its jaunty high-hats and climbing bassline. On this, and its companion song about global warming (“Endless Summer of the Damned”), Ash’s garage rock opens up a trapdoor to more of their post-punk past. “Adrenalin” continues in that vein, with Murphy growling and yelling as elevated piano tinkle over a screeching din of jittery guitars noodling all awash in a surfeit of distortion. The funky new wave of “Undone” definitely sounds like it was painstakingly made in the ‘80s instead of during a blistering three-week 2006 studio session at Ojai, California’s Zircon Skye.
While White doesn’t sound like an album created in the present, that fact serves as both its prime asset and its most niggling detraction. Resurrecting the 1998 song, “The Dog’s A Vapour” is both a careening auditory wash of sounds but also somewhat desultory towards the end of its almost 7 minute runtime. It still works aesthetically, but only as a phantom of its former self. “International Bullet Proof Talent” gets a boost from Murphy’s vocal theatricality and “Saved” features death knell saxophone skronks in the distance.
Go Away White’s upbeat anthem materializes on the reverb stutter steps of “Black Stone Heart.” Right before an ebullient bridge of whistles, Murphy sings: “I’ll go there with my darkness and go away white,” as a sad irony. It’s as though the band is wiping away all the darkness they’ve sonically dredged up in the past and coming to terms with it. With a new static white image after 25 years comes a new tombstone. R.I.P. Bauhaus. Again.
For more information visit www.bauhausmusik.com or myspace.com/officialbauhaus
