Bauhaus - Mask
#470
By Tom Mott & Stephen Lam
Bauhaus
Mask
Genre: Post-Punk Horror (Stephen) | 3D House of Wax (Tom)
Allen’s Rating: 4 out of 5
Tom's rating: 3.9 bottles of black hair die
Stephen’s rating: 3.8 out of 5
(NOTE: Tom put his own review first because it's the "layman's" review, followed by Stephen's more knowledgeable assessment).
TOM:
Tom's Highlights
The Passion of Lovers
Kick in the Eye
Muscle in Plastic
The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
I am not super-knowledgeable in the Goth arena, but I'm a quick learn. Last year, I discovered the Dark & Gothic playlist on Spotify, and wowzers there are some jewels there: Dear Prudence by Souixie and the Banshees. Valentine's Day by Klaus Nomi. Scott Walker "30th Century Man". This Mortal Coil "Kangaroo." Echo and the Bunnymen "The Killing Moon" (OK, yes, I knew that one), Department S "Is Vic There?" Tones on Tail "Lions" ... good stuff. (Do Goths say "wowzers"?)
The standout of that playlist is Bauhaus "Bela Lugosi's Dead" a mesmerizing 9-minute epic that has scratchy guitar sounds, swooping bats, hypnotic rhythms, virgin brides, wooden coffins, and the lead singer intoning "Undead Undead." (I thought it was "I'm dead I'm dead" which works equally well.) It's their Land of the Glass Pinecones/Roadrunner/Vienna/Up in Her Room. A song that blots out the existence of all other music while it's playing. That song was recorded "live in the studio" in a single take -- the first thing they recorded together, six weeks after Bauhaus had formed. It's another of those "they only pressed 5,000 copies but everyone who heard it went out and started a band" stories. Oh just go listen to it.
This is their second album. Is it as good as the first thing they ever did? Let's find out, track by track ...
Hair of the Dog -- crazy oscillator sounds, or is that scratching on guitar strings, or maybe on a coffin lid. Tribal drums. I like this.
The Passion of Lovers -- pulsing fever-dream.
Of Lilies and Remains -- This one starts wit' a Bri'ish spoken wor' bit, guv'nuh that seems quite tongue-in-cheeky. More unsettling guitar scratches. Let's talk about the drummer. He's funky!
Dancing -- After four tracks, the formula has revealed itself: Funky drums and strong funky bass lines. A good beat. Something you can dance to. Throw some scratchy guitars on top, or blorpy phrynixillated snorgle sax, or oscillators, or sound effects, or a toy piano, and then either baritone crooning or baritone wailing. And it mostly works.
Hollow Hills -- Spooky fun. Man, now I wish I was a goth in high school.
Kick in the Eye -- It's got that Duran Duran funk, the Iggy Pop vocals, the Phil Manzanera guitar sounds. Yeah, it kinda sounds like a Bowie song, but it's different enough. This sounds like a single.
In Fear of Fear -- almost a filler track, but with enough double-tracked skronking saxes and oddness to make it to the finish line.
Muscle in Plastic -- a quick workout reminiscent of Killing Joke, with some piano bashing on top. Really strong.
The Man with the X-Ray Eyes -- Black Sabbath named themselves after a film by Mario Bava who later directed Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs. The Man with the X-Ray Eyes was a Roger Corman B-movie with Ray Milland. Yes, Bauhaus is dark, but it's Roger Corman, Edward Gorey dark. Silly dark. And on second listen, this song's a highlight.
Mask -- Finally, we get to the title track, finishing up Side two. Dark and dissonant, and then -- what? -- lovely acoustic guitar 3 minutes in. Very 60s psychedelic, like something Love might do.
So how do we go about rating this? It's not a G.O.A.T. for me, but it's strong enough and different enough that I'm 1000% sure it's someone's G.O.A.T. Cool, weird, dissonant, sexy, unfamiliar. It sounds like they're charting new waters. I wish I had heard this in high school, and will listen a few more times.
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STEPHEN:
Stephen's Highlights:
Hollow Hills
Kick In The Eye
Muscle In Plastic
Mask
I never thought of Bauhaus as a Goth band.
They were, to me, a post-punk Iggy and The Stooges. Same shock elements, relatively confrontational stage antics, similar sexualization, a hot mess of an on-stage presence, raw, piercing and tribal music. This isn’t your “omg I so sad so pretty so depressed” Roland synth strings baritone guitar modulated-reverb Goth. Bauhaus was never depressed. Bauhaus was Horror.
In this way, “Mask” was a worthy successor to “In The Flat Field”. You can hear that primal grit slash horror of “Double Dare” and “ITFF” on “Hair of The Dog”, “The Passion of Lovers”, “The Man with X-Ray Eyes”, etc. Even the quiet track - “Hollow Hills” - was not so much a Goth ballad than a horror movie scene, complete with eerie strings courtesy of Ash “bowing” the strings of his Tele gently with a drumstick. (I was fortunate enough to have seen them live in 1984/5-ish at a tiny club in Hong Kong. When they played “Hollow Hills”, Murphy had glow-in-the-dark powder on his face, holding a florescent tube, and the entire place was otherwise pitch black. He looked like a singing skull. Good times.)
Elsewhere, “Mask” was also where Bauhaus began to “produce” their sound. Lots of little Martin-Hannett-type treatments like high strings, synth/processed snares, etc - all together giving the band a shot at making danceable hits. “Kick in the Eye”, for instance, was a made-to-chart Bauhaus song, their “dance dance dance to the radio” moment, if you will. The atonal textures in “Fear of Fear” was only possible because of the funky groove underneath. The Peter Murphy Vocal Stack started to become a thing - an expanded “instrument” that only had room to extend itself over clean grooves not over-occupied by distorted guitars. They were wrapping the Bauhaus sound around the bones of post-punk dance grooves and, on songs like “Kick in the Eye”, it worked rather well (which also might have been where the Goth crossover began - Goths love to dance).
A few cool tracks: “Dancing” and “Muscle in Plastic” to various degrees sound like Bauhaus doing Tom Waits (or, more precisely, Murphy doing the Tom Waits growl), and the result was reassuringly biting and awesome. The title track, “Mask”, was pure undiluted vintage Bauhaus pressed-to-the-tilt horror that would have easy been from their first record.
One of my favorite things about this album was the cover art - caricature alien figures almost looking like some kind of futuristic horror confrontation - drawn by guitarist Danish Ash. The appearance of the timid tele-tubby-like creature behind the figure in the middle was especially unsettling (but still not very Goth-y).
“Mask” gave the audience an extension of what Bauhaus was known for - gritty, primal horror - but with the added danceability and expanded, atonal, howling sonic textures. All in all a “fun” record, and, hindsight, far less pretentious than the song-cycle experimentations in the following “The Sky’s Gone Out” and “Burning From The Inside”.
https://open.spotify.com/album/378ahhobt690RQEsyD8DaK?si=DN9K8W1pTnuC-g3qAiMxfQ
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