Bauhaus.....Go Away White

Well, the myth has turned into a reality. Bauhaus has released a new album. 25 years since the 1983 swan song "Burning From The Inside" the band returns and leaves forever with "Go Away White."

Bauhaus was always an unknown quantity, never the sum of its parts and somehow out of time and place. There's not much point in comparing this band to the band that recorded the last studio album-musical life has lead them all through so much terrain it was bound to produce a work that bears little resemblance to anything else that came before it.

If anything, I hear snatches of all the music the members have collectively produced SINCE they split. The slinky, eliptical guitar lines of Tones On Tail merge with the psychedelic atmospherics and pop tones of Love & Rockets. These sounds bubble up underneath Peter's Soaring, shouted and singed vocal lines. They still clearly have "it".

Although the album boasts some great tunes, not everything here translates into solid songwriting. That may be as much about the speed with which it was recorded(18 days) as it is the chemistry in its current configuration. There are rough moments where instead the overlapping of expressions creates something far more intriguing.

It sounds as though there was an incident during the recording of the album which nixed them ever working together again, nor are they touring to support the album. Perhaps this final release by Bauhaus is what we have for a cap on their legacy? I guess it could have been a lot worse...

The songs themselves are very different stylistically. Moving from glam-rock stompers to evocative black dirges to delicate reverential odes. There is something here for nearly everyone in their variously attuned fan base. They decided to include "The Dog's a Vapour" for some reason, though its more like a curio, having been recorded almost a decade earlier around the time of the 1998 "Resurrection Tour".

Peter Murphy's vocals have patinaed well with age, growing rough around the edges of those high notes but the urgency of his voice remains. One thing is evident at first listen-how much their playing has evolved. Strange then that they decided to hastily record the album's 9 remaining tracks. For those with access to Itunes, there are an additional 2 tracks but these are merely live video versions of "Bela Lagosis Dead" and "Dark Entries" recorded during their 2005 Coachella Festival appearance.

As albums go, this doesn't hold together as much as I would have hoped. Of course its creation leaves little mystery as to why. Perhaps with so many strong personalities trying to co-exist, like a star going supernova, it was inevitable that the conflagration that followed consumed the band. What we are left with is not so much the void of the remains but the white heat of the afterglow from a distance. Bauhaus...Return in Black...Go Away White.

Track Listing
"Too Much 21st Century" – 3:53
"Adrenalin" – 5:39
"Undone" – 4:46
"International Bulletproof Talent" – 4:02
"Endless Summer of the Damned" – 4:44
"Saved" – 6:27
"Mirror Remains" – 4:58
"Black Stone Heart" – 4:32
"The Dog's a Vapour" – 6:49
"Zikir" – 3:04