Aural Aggravation

Peter Murphy – Silver Shade – Metropolis Records – 9th May 2025

David J Haskins – The Mother Tree – Erototox Decodings – 6 June 2025

Christopher Nosniobor

It seems quite incredible that following a debut single which alone created a whole new genre, Bauhaus would release four definitive studio albums in just three years. The chemistry and creative crackle which existed between the four members was something special, and, judging by the 2008 reunion album Go Away White something that was very much of the moment.

While all four members remained active after the split in 1983, subjectively speaking, none of them have really replicated the same quality, or consistency, despite Love and Rockets – Daniel Ash, Kevin Haskins, and brother David J enjoying a degree of success with their more overtly pop-orientated rock sound.

The release of new albums by both Peter Murphy and David J within a month of each other affords an opportunity to observe just how different their respective creative trajectories have been, and also perhaps offers some insight into why Bauhaus reformations haven’t been entirely successful, with a 2022 tour of the US being cancelled, Murphy entering rehab, and the reunion ending.

Both of these albums are very much art-orientated, albeit approaching said art from almost diametric angles.

Murphy’s latest offering isn’t strictly a solo effort. Initially released as a standalone single, ‘Let the Flowers Grow’, which now closes the album as a ‘bonus track’, is a duet with Boy George, and much of the material on the album was co-written with Youth, who also produced it. Silver Shade contains twelve tracks and has a running time of fifty-nine minutes. As such, it’s a longish album, and the crisp 80s-sounding production, while suited to the material, dates it somewhat.

‘Swoon’ is classic Murphy in full-on Bowie mode, with a dash of Lou Reed and some grandiose electropop leanings. But if the bassline is lifted from The Sisters of Mercy’s ‘This Corrosion’, something about the swinging pop groove is actually closer to Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark’. You can clearly hear Bauhaus in all of this, but it’s predominantly in the vocals – perhaps not entirely surprisingly. And at five and a half minutes, it feels a bit laboured.

‘Hot Roy’ is Outside era Bowie crossed with Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and The Associates. It’s poppy, it’s high drama, and it’s an early high point in an album that’s solid enough, but rarely spectacular. ‘The Artroom Wonder’ was an obvious single choice, but does sound like so many other things chucked into a blender, and elsewhere, the title track brings some dark glam vibes, and while it’s big on theatre, it’s not quite so big on substance, and feels rather predictable.

Predictable is not a word which can be applied to David J Haskins’ The Mother Tree, an album which is released in tandem with a book of poems, Rhapsody, Threnody & Prayer, both a tribute to his mother. As such, it’s a spoken word album with musical accompaniment, and, for context, it’s worth quoting that ‘David J’s decision to release these projects under his birth name, “Haskins,” (the name his brother Kevin used in both their bands together: Bauhaus and Love and Rockets) underscores their deep familial and emotional significance to him. He calls The Mother Tree, “my most personal work yet.”’ And that personal aspect rings out loud and clear, including as it does ‘profound reflections on life, love, loss, and touching tributes to late cultural icons and artists including Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, Jeff Buckley, Jack Kerouac and Mark Linkous.’ We feel and experience loss on different levels, and Haskins in no way suggests the loss of his mother is the same experience as the passing of a friend or an artist one admires: this is an exploration of the muti-faceted experience of loss and the way they all leave a different kind of void in one’s life.

The first piece – the title track – is a twenty-one minute piano-led meditation with subtle strings as the musical backdrop to a descriptive, linear narrative tale. There is a simplicity about it, not to mention an immediacy and directness. ‘this is a personal sacred story’, he says in the early stages of this patchwork of scenes which depict moments of his mother’s life. While the instrumentation is perhaps synonymous with high art, the words and their delivery are unpretentious, a flow of recollections and reminiscences, some harrowing, heart-rending, and all so real. Because life is often harrowing and heart-rending. ‘I miss your laugh’, he says openly, before effusing about perfect Sunday roasts. ‘Loved and lost’ is the succinct and poignant summary of the composition, and one which runs through the album as a whole. The other four tracks are substantially shorter, most around six minutes in duration, with almost folksy instrumentation and more contemplative spoken-word narratives, rich in little details which render them all the more vivid. There’s something almost unfiltered about it, and it feels so resonatingly human.

It sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from Murphy’s album: it’s art without artifice, a richly-woven tapestry where emotion is subtly laced through every moment.

These two albums may provide some indication of how the individual members brought specific traits to Bauhaus in the early years, and provide some measure of how they came to be increasingly divergent over time. Murphy’s album is clearly the more accessible, and will likely receive more coverage and acclaim, and reach a far wider audience, and be lauded and cherished by many. But for me, although The Mother Tree is a very different beast and challenging on a number of levels, it has a deeper resonance, and connects on a deeper level.