Luke Haines’ new album Luke Haines In ...Setting The Dogs On The Post-Punk Postman was supposed to be coming out tomorrow, but the COVID-19 thing threw a bit of a spanner in the works of the worldwide vinyl pressing supply chain, so it won’t be in stores before some time in April. The follow-up to Beat Poetry for Survivalists, last year’s collaboration with REM’s Peter Buck, this new album see Haines holding forth on topics such as the eccentric Scottish musician and humorist Ivor Cutler, Japanese underground director Shuji Terayama, why he’ll never return to the city of Liverpool, Andrea Dworkin, and suicidal pumpkins.

I asked Luke Haines some questions via email about the album’s first video.

What inspires a song about a former Stasi spy?

So, the original idea for the song came from the 2018 Salisbury poisonings of former Soviet spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, carried out by alleged KGB operatives. That was the inspiration but it’s not about that. It’s kind of about this very male obsession with surveillance and freedom of speech. There’s another song on the album about a middle-aged guy who is obsessed with U Boats and ‘numbers’ stations. Middle-aged male paranoia. The song was kind of a late entry from me on the Peter Buck album, so I held it back, ‘cos I thought it sounded groovy.

What sort of fucked-up Communist bloc guitar are you strumming in the video?

The guitar is an early ‘70s Tonika. It came from Minsk, in pieces. Every Tonika was handbuilt to vague specifications. The Russians had very little to go on when it came to guitar design with no access to Fenders and Gibsons or much western rock music. It has a reputation, on the internet at least, as being the worst built guitar in the world. Not true, it’s an absolute motherfucker of an instrument. I reckon you could run it over with a Soviet tank and it would still play.

When you’re wearing the toupee, the fake moustache and glasses, you look exactly like an ex-girlfriend of mine’s dad. He was in fact from a Soviet bloc country and he did have a toupee, and a moustache although I think his was real. He was always dressed like he bought his clothes by weight. Clearly you are a master of subtle disguise. Do you reckon you’d have made a good spy?

The video was based on these pictures. All shot in my flat which hasn’t been decorated since 1983 and looks like a Stasi interrogation centre anyway.

As to whether I could cut the mustard as a spook, it depends on whether the ultimate aim is towards chaos or order. The jury is out, but any welterweight songwriter would probably make a pretty good spy.