Love and Rockets- "No New Tale to Tell" Video (1987)

"When you're down, it's a long way up.

When you're up, it's a long way down.

It's all the same thing.

No new tale to tell."

Love and Rockets- Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven (1985) MP3 & FLAC -For Ana-

"Live the life you love. Use a god you trust. And don't take it all too seriously."

The demise of Bauhaus was an unceremonious affair: on the eve of releasing Burning from the Inside, the band was set to play two shows at the late great Hammersmith Palais in London. Taking a cue from one of their main influences, Ziggy-era Bowie, they decided to cryptically reveal their split at the end of the second show, with David J announcing, "rest in peace" as the band left the stage after a lengthy encore. Reportedly, the split was the result of typical rock-band maladies such as creative differences and jealousies; however, what likely happened was that during the recording sessions for Bauhaus' last album, which took place largely without Peter Murphy due to an illness, Daniel Ash, David J, and Kevin Haskins figured out that life without their temperamental lead singer offered intriguing creative possibilities. After working on various independent projects such as Ash and Haskins' Tones on Tail and David J's Jazz Butcher and The Sinister Ducks, David J organized a Bauhaus reunion rehearsal that Murphy agreed to but never bothered to show up for; nevertheless, the rehearsal sans Murphy went well, and out of this was born Love and Rockets (the name having been taken from a comic book serial), which largely left behind the overt Gothic affectations of Bauhaus and instead explored a more accessible, psychedelia-tinged version of Post-Punk. While their second LP, Express, is often considered their best work, their debut, Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven is arguably just as strong if not better, as it is more focused and takes more creative chances than its successor. While Love and Rockets manage to retain many of the dark themes they explored in Bauhaus, their sound on their debut LP is much more lush and pop-oriented while adding psychedelic overtones to the mix. The non-LP single (which was quickly added to subsequent versions of the album) "Ball of Confusion" is a telling example of this creative rebirth. While not as brilliant as the original Temptations version, Love and Rockets manage to simultaneously update the song as a psych-goth rocker but also re-contextualize the song as a club anthem. Simply a masterstroke. The album itself is full of moody tracks, such as "A Private Future" whose lush structure of descending guitar arpeggios is quite reminiscent of Bauhaus' swan-song, but the addition of a few straightforward pop elements early in the song creates a greater sense of tension when things take a darker turn at the mid-way point. One of the truly transcendent moments on the album is "The Dog-End of a Day Gone By," which is a stunning neo-psych anthem that makes it hardly seem possible that it could emanate from essentially the same band responsible for "Bela Lugosi's Dead."  While Love and Rockets would go on to unforeseen commercial heights later in the eighties, the artistic euphoria of exploring something new is palpable on Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven, making it perhaps the purest distillation of the band's unique sound.

Love and Rockets- "Ball of Confusion" Video (1985)

Psych-Goth: what a great idea!

Bauhaus- The Sky's Gone Out (1982) MP3 & FLAC

"Swing the Heartache just for her sake."

Often said to pale in comparison to In the Flat Field and Mask, Bauhaus' third studio LP, The Sky's Gone Out, finds the band attempting to move beyond the glam-meets-dub of their earlier proto-Goth work by exploring a more sonically textured approach. Thus, The Sky's Gone Out is very much a transitional album, and a vastly underrated one at that. The lead track, a cover of Brian Eno's "Third Uncle," crackles with glam aggression, and while it doesn't quite best the original, it is certainly one of Bauhaus' finest moments on record. Conversely, "All We Ever Wanted Was Everything" is almost folky with its simple acoustic guitar part and Peter Murphy's defeated vocals, while David J's fretless bass provides the song's pensive melody. While not the most cohesive album in Bauhaus' discography, The Sky's Gone Out is the most ambitious, containing some of the band's most textured and dynamic songs.

Bauhaus- Bela Lugosi's Dead EP (1979) MP3 & FLAC

"The virginal brides file past his tomb, strewn with time's dead flowers bereft in deathly bloom."

One of the pinnacles of the Post-Punk era, Bauhaus' debut single is both enigmatic and indelible. While David Bowie and Joy Division are clearly touchstones here, Bauhaus' use of Dub-Reggae studio trickery, such as over-emphasizing David J's bass sound and adding heavy reverb to guitar and percussion, creates an unforgettable and unparalleled atmosphere of dread, which propels the song toward greatness. Not to be overlooked are Daniel Ash's spectral guitar textures and creepy string manipulations and Peter Murphy's glowering croon, all of which virtually create the Goth-Rock template during the course of the song's nine plus minutes. Absolutely essential.

Bauhaus- "Bela Lugosi's Dead" Video (1982) Live at the Old Vic, London

Nice live version of a peerless song:

Love and Rockets- Express (1986) MP3 & FLAC

"Are you confused by the chaos in everyone's wandering eyes?"

Express is often cited as Love and Rockets' masterpiece, and while it isn't necessarily better than the album that preceded it (their debut Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven), it is certainly more fully conceived, creating a psychedelia-tinged Post-Goth template that a thousand wannabes would unsuccessfully try to replicate. Less consciously chart-friendly than Love and Rockets' later albums, Express contains some breathtakingly great songs, such as "Kundalini Express," which is carried along by a sexy, serpentine (and instantly memorable) Daniel Ash guitar riff, and the humorously titled, "Yin and Yang (The Flowerpot Man)," whose frenetic acoustic guitar-driven tempo feels like a runaway train heading straight over a cliff. This is, without a doubt, one of the more sonically striking albums of the mid-eighties, which is due, in large part, to the talents of Producer John A. Rivers, who had worked earlier in the decade with The Specials and The Swell Maps. Transcendental, anthemic, and catchy as hell, Express was one of the most original albums to emerge from the death throes of Post-Punk.

Love and Rockets- "Yin and Yang (The Flowerpot Man)" Video (1986)

Winklepickers anyone?

Bauhaus- In the Flat Field (1980) Omnibus Edition (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC

"Let me catch the slit of light, for a maiden's sake and maiden flight. In the flat field I do get bored, replace with Piccadilly whores."

While In the Flat Field is certainly one of the most influential Post-Punk albums ever recorded, it also enjoys a far more rarified distinction: its release (arguably) constituted the birth of a new genre, Goth(ic)-Rock. Irregardless of what that term means today, at the dawn of the eighties, it was a particularly minimalist branch of Post-Punk, which, somewhat ironically, had roots in the Glam-Rock scene of the early seventies, particularly Bowie, Iggy Pop, and T-Rex. Without a doubt, these influences cast a long shadow on Bauhaus, but on In the Flat Field, the band consistently exploits these shadows in original and diverse ways. For example, lead vocalist Peter Murphy sounds something like Iggy Pop channeling a vampiric Ziggy Stardust, somehow possessing just the right type of deranged charisma to pull it off convincingly, and Daniel Ash's scratchy, noisy, minimalist guitar work ably ignites both the chaos and the spaciousness of these songs, often achieving these effects simultaneously. A truly stunning debut that they were destined to never top.