Bauhaus

If goth fans love Bauhaus so much, it must be because the band keeps dying. Twenty-five years ago, when the foursome first called it quits, they did so just in time to save the band’s reputation. Bauhaus was quickly heading into the realm of slickly overproduced dance tracks, the kind that would have certainly defrocked them of their goth-father status. Without a doubt, the ’80s would have ruined them. Fortunately, personality conflicts and so-called musical differences intervened and saved the day. Frontman Peter Murphy went one way while his remaining bandmates went another, eventually scoring big with Love and Rockets.

Now with Go Away White, the band’s first album in two and half decades, comes the announcement that Bauhaus is once again no more. They’ve broken up and sworn never to reconvene. Like the vampires they once crooned about, Bauhaus has died and come back to life, only to die yet again. Those musical differences are like an unmovable stake in the heart of Bauhaus.

And that’s a shame, really, because this new collection showcases everything that was good about this unmistakably unique act. Its almost as if the last quarter-century never happened, as if Peter Murphy never went solo and Love and Rockets never stooped so low as to record “So Alive.” Bauhaus fans never wanted “So Alive,” after all. They wanted “undead, undead, undead,” which is pretty much what we get here. Indeed, this will be familiar territory to most Bauhaus fans, with Peter Murphy waxing dramatic about everything from schizophrenic spies to anorexic monsters and dogs made of vapor.

Roughly speaking, White can be divided into two separate acts. The first act is basically the hard rocking, post punk glamorama that culminates with “Endless Summer of the Damned,” a sonically pleasing, riff driven homage to the goth scene. This is the “Telegram Sam” side of Bauhaus, the Bowiesque edifice upon which the band built much of its following. These songs are of a simpler structure. Daniel Ash’s buzzing guitars join forces in Wonder Twin fashion with David J’s funky bass lines, creating that unmistakable sound that others have attempted but never achieved. These are straight-ahead rockers, but with strange undercurrents to them, combining weird melody lines with social commentary.

In the album’s second act, we get the creepy-crawly Bauhaus, the droning dirges that sound slightly medieval. This is the “Mask” side of Bauhaus – the mossy underside of the stone, so to speak. Here we find decay and ruin, the moonlight dying behind the clouds. This is where the band indulges its paranoia, melding minor chord progressions with tolling bells and Byzantine chants. These are more like tone poems than actual songs, strange incantations meant to summon foreign gods. They tend to be lyrically obscure, recalling the dark German Expressionism of the early 20th century. On “Saved,” for instance, Murphy’s poetry struggles to defy human logic: “one with your body, you are walking piss/ water things do not part.” Elsewhere on the track he recites even stranger lines: “You are entering a pearl corridor/ Lying on your crimson spot, I become unconscious.”

Such obscurity hardly matters, though, since listening to Murphy wallow in his lyrical mire is part of the Bauhaus experience. What’s really too bad is the fact that this band can’t seem to work out its kinks. For all the acclaim and reverence that’s been heaped on Bauhaus, it’s important to remember that they were only together for a few short years. But the music that came out of that collaboration was of a rare vintage. Who can ever forget “Stigmata Martyr” or “The Spy in the Cab,” just to name a couple of their early masterpieces?

But the act that produced such poetic soundscapes is no more, and White will have to serve as its swan song. No matter. It’s a brilliant collection and makes for a perfect capstone to the Bauhaus legacy. And as last albums go, it’s one of the very best.

At least the band died in style.

Feature Tracks: “Endless Summer of the Damned,” “Saved,” “Zikir.”

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