There is a new Luke Haines and Peter Buck collaboration out, and I highly recommend it. All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out was created along with longtime Buck partners-in-crime Scott McCaughey and Linda Pitmon and it’s a snarling cauldron of bizarre imagery, psychedelic guitar rock (Buck is very much on form here), glam, Haines’ signature trenchant societal observations and Lenny Kaye! I reckon this one is even better than the first one, which I liked a lot.
I caught up with Luke Haines via email.
Love the new album. It’s even better than the first one. Was this also recorded via the internet, or were you all able to be in a studio together while you were touring in the UK?
I’m glad you dig the album. We all do too. The album was all recorded remotely. Primarily because when we started recording (mid 2020) we were in the pandemic. So, like many people we were just sat around at home , and thought, ‘well we’ve got an album to do -better get on with it. Maybe, well all be in the same room for the next one. Maybe not.
Such eclectic subject matter bouncing from one topic to another—as opposed to the concept albums of your recent past—what inspired this crop of lyrics?
Well, as I said we were deep in pandemic, so my mind was certainly concentrated on making some kind of statement. But what kind of statement can anyone make in a pandemic. Anything ‘lucid’ is doomed to being trite or histrionic. We’re (maybe still) actually in the abyss. So I think the lyrics are a collection of pop art psychosis. Or junk art psychosis, a bit like that scene with Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters, when he’s making a model of the mountain out of mashed potato. That scene is essentially what this album is.
When you’re collaborating at a distance and writing songs, do the lyrics come first, a hummed melody or a riff or…? How does that work?
I listen to Peter’s demo and just start singing along. I usually have the bare bones within a few goes. If I can’t come up with anything him or Scott just send something else. The ‘process’ is not at all precious.
As easy as they are to do, very few artists can put together a truly unique and/or witty collage—a notable exception being Cold War Steve—what’s the “message” of your most excellent collage work on the packaging?
There is currently an obsession with NFTs and AI created art work. Whether AI yields anything worthwhile in the future who knows. I have no interest in digital art forms. I wanted the sleeve to look very analogue – so collage and oil paint is as analogue as it gets. The cover is if anything an amalgam of the last album as well. It is Apocalypse Beach, it’s just that when we recorded the first album Apocalypse Beach was a fantasy – now it is a reality.
Congrats on winning my coveted “Best Album Title of 2022” award. Truly fantastic. Who came up with it?
Thank you. I’ve never won anything before. Sadly, I have to admit that Peter came up with the title. His neighbour, a doctor, said to him pre-vaccine, that he’d been dealing with infectious diseases all his life, but with this one ‘All the kids were super bummed out.’ Never let a global pandemic get in the way of a great album title. I’ll take the award anyway.
The song on heavy rotation on my turntable is the title track. That’s a fucking good one. That weird shrieking monkey sample really freaks out one of our dogs. You guys (and gal) should get your Pink Floyd on again for an entire album of dark psychedelia. That’s my advice. Take it or leave it.
Yeah we’re really into apes. The ape section probably should have gone on longer. That was me with my commercial head on, ya know – ‘if we have five minutes of apes they won’t play it on the radio, better cut it down to two minutes of apes.’ I’‘m totally up for the early Floyd. Syd was great of course. Their best stuff was from Piper up to Atom Heart Mother. I’m an Ummagumma, man. Great album!
American tour?
We’d like to do an American tour. Visas are kind of expensive but it hasn’t been ruled out. So there’s that and because of Brexit it’s now really complicated playing in Europe. I’m kind of stranded in the UK.
I saved this one for last: What the fuck is going on in the post-Brexit United Kingdom?!?!
I’m glad you asked me about this one. I have the answer: Now that the Queen has gone the royal family are in a perilous position. The Queen was the last one who had direct lineage to the royal family’s Prussian/German heritage. She was the last one that shored up the monarchy’s ‘safe’ position after World War I. That’s all gone now and they are rudderless – they’ll be gone in ten years time and that is gonna be the game changer. Once they’re gone all bets will be off. Factor that into an equation that takes in the English Civil War of 1642, the Essex witch trials, the treaty of Versailles and Maastricht and therein lies the answer. Keir Starmer (or whichever motherfucker it is) will need to fund a think tank of academics and historians and find an algorithm that will ‘lead us out of Brexit,’ which is all the fault of Loaded magazine and those ‘culture’ arseholes who were writing about ‘cool Britannia’ in the ‘90s. They all write for the Guardian now or are on the radio where they moan about Brexit, and blame the people who voted for it, not realising they were largely responsible for putting the Brexit vote on the table in the first place. You cannot mess with culture. The clue’s in the name!
Uncanny Island, the very first solo art exhibition by musician and author Luke Haines is on at the Eston Arts Centre through the end of the month. Should you find yourself in North Yorkshire, you should drop by and check it out.
The exhibit features Haines’ psychedelic visions of British wrestlers from the 1970s and early 80s (echoing his 2011 concept album 9 ½ Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s & Early ‘80s) and a Christmas tree festooned with ornaments bearing the likeness of everyone who was ever in the Fall. (The band had 66 members during Mark E. Smith’s five decade run, in case you were wondering.)
Luke Haines: Yep. First solo exhibition. I’m pleased it’s in the north—away from curators and the dull art people.
Tell me about the Fall Xmas tree?
I’d painted a MES bauble for a friend’s Xmas present. The obvious next stage was to paint every member of the Fall, but I had no reason to embark on such a futile endeavour. Then the artist Neil McNally asked me if I wanted to have an exhibition. It was then that I realized it was time for the Fall Xmas tree.
I know that you’ve described your work as outsider art in the past, but with the Lou Reeds, the Hawkwind paintings, the Maoist Monkees—and of course the psychedelic wrestlers which refer to your own album—it seems more like you’re doing something more akin to “rock snob art”? How do you see it?
My stuff is more like sitcom art. I tend to do the same thing: put popular or unpopular culture figures in absurd situations. Like putting Hawkwind in a balloon carrying esoteric knowledge (The North Sea Scrolls) back to their squat in Ladbroke Grove. If Hawkwind actually did this the world would be improved immeasurably. In the show there are a couple of paintings depicting wrestlers having diabolical fever dreams about It’s A Royal Knockout. I’d like to do a whole art show about It’s A Royal Knockout. Maybe a straightforward reenactment.
How often are you asked to comment on the art of Ronnie Wood, Ringo Starr or Paul Stanley?
I think that worrying about pop stars inflicting their art on an ungrateful world will be the least of our problem post covid. There will a tsunami of ‘lockdown art washing up. It will all be terrible.
Mark E Smith Xmas tree bauble
The Fall Xmas Tree in situ.
Fall Xmas Tree (detail)
Liver Sausage (Mark “Rollerball” Rocco)
Brian Glover
Dickie Davies
Eston Arts Centre, 176 -178 High Street, Eston, Middlesbrough, TS6 9JA.
Out today on Cherry Red Records is Setting The Dogs On The Post Punk Postman, the latest installment of Luke Haines’ whimsical muse. What’s been on his mind lately you might wonder? Wonder no more, the album is filled with songs about German U-Boat captains, ex-Stasi spies, Nixon and Mao, humorous Scottish poet Ivor Cutler, a nefarious pumpkin up to no good, landscape gardening, and of course, Andrea Dworkin’s knees. In other words, it’s the new Luke Haines album! Setting The Dogs On The Post Punk Postman features guest contributions from REM’s Peter Buck and Julian Barratt. It is the creation of a man who certainly knows how to amuse himself. I applaud this. I prefer artists who do it for themselves first. I mean, why should they do it for you?
I posed a few questions to Luke over email, here’s how he responded.
Some people think it’s Vic Godard. It isn’t. Vic’s great anyway…I’d had the title for ages – and what are you gonna do with a title like that? Use it. I hate the ‘idea’ of ‘post punk.’ It didn’t exist. It went from punk, to new wave. Post punk doesn’t come into it. The notion of post punk is just another example of curator culture. ‘Waiter there’s a curator in my soup.’ In the song – the post punk post man is very much the ‘messenger.’ You should always shoot the messenger (or set the dogs on them) The messenger is invariably an idiot and up to no good; Brother number 1, or 2. Another thought: I’d been thinking about Epic Soundtracks. I didn’t know him well, but I was very sad when he died. He deserves more thought…so this song is a kind of tribute to Epic.
What did this person do to piss you off? Did you argue about Swell Maps and Throbbing Gristle? What happened?
(answered above)
Do you reckon he’ll know that the song is about him?
As explained – the song isn’t about anyone in particular. However, when you write a song about someone, then that person should always know, otherwise what’s the point.
Was there a particular reason that you were photographed in front of the Ace Cafe?
There’s an unreconstructed element to the record. Musically and lyrically. The Ace Cafe is the most unreconstructed place I could think of. They sell posters of scantily-clad biker ‘chicks’ that are slightly tatty. It’s all very un ironic. It’s just assumed that bikers who go there might like that kind of poster on the wall of their workshop. I love everything about the Ace especially its location – in the middle of nowhere but slightly near Neasden. Jim Fry (the photographer) and I had been talking about that great Bob Marley documentary when the Wailers come to tour the UK for the first time, and they end up holed up in a terraced house in Neasden and then cutting the tour short because of the snow. Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh took the snow as an omen of London being Babylon, and they hopped it back to Kingston JA. From there I got to the idea of the sleeve being the Ace Cafe.
What about Ivor Cutler? Did you see him taking the bus one day and years later this is what inspired the song?
Ivor used to live near me. I used to get on the C11 bus and Ivor would as often or not be aboard. He would often strike up conversations with strangers on the bus, not in a mad’ way, just in a curious way. The line about the ‘hat’ is an actual conversation he had with a school kid. I made a mental note of it, knowing i’d use it one day.
I won’t ask you about “Yes, Mr. Pumpkin,” the inspiration there seems far too personal.
Right. It started out as a Syd Barrett kind of singalong ditty, which I couldn’t get out of my head. When I started recording it it reminded me of a song by The Mighty Boosh. During the first lockdown the only person I kept bumping into was Julian Barratt, I figured that as I’d had Julia (Davis) on one of my albums that all the signs were telling me to get Julian on this one!
I should. Since working with Peter Buck I’ve got really into guitars again. I’ve become almost obsessive. It’s a good job I’m not wealthy otherwise I’d just blow it all on guitars. The electric guitar is the greatest invention of the 20th century. We should worship guitars (not the people who play them so much) as wooden (or metal) gods.
There was “Breaking Up” towards the end of the Auteurs. I kind of hid that one away, as I thought writing love songs was kind of redundant. I was wrong on both counts.
Did the missus approve of that one?
I think she would have disapproved if it had been anything other than what it is. I still don’t really understand why pop songs don’t get down to the nitty gritty of carnality more often. The song is kind of funny but it’s also dead serious. It came out like Man Who Sold The World-period Bowie, sung by Judge Dredd. I’m pretty happy about that.
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.
I’ve posted here before about Luke Haines’ excellent Righteous in the Afternoon show broadcast every Tuesday on Boogaloo Radio. It’s a fun time for rock snobs and I highly recommend it. Anyway, tomorrow he’s got something special planned, not the usual record spinning he does, but an original radio play.
From the press release:
“A man can only see clearly when he has been blind drunk for 30 years.” – Lord Reith.
This is not the story of a man at the top of his game. This is the story of a man at the end of his game. Let’s call him Endgame Man. Endgame Man is aged somewhere in his 50s. Success has dabbled with him and has long been dabbling elsewhere. The last chance saloon closed on Sunday night and it’s now a nothing Tuesday afternoon. The action begins on a bench in a scrubby enclosure in front of an estate in North London. Endgame Man’s’ daily trip to the Costcutter makes Captain Willards journey down the Nung River look like a gentle punt down The Cam.
‘Test Driving The New Prius’ is a 35 minute radio play (with sound effects) written and performed by Jim Fry (Earl Brutus, Pre New) and Luke Haines. (The Auteurs, Baader Meinhof ) Just as that other modernist masterpiece Ulysses depicted a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, Test Driving The New Prius follows the life in a daze of Endgame Man. In this tale of derring-do our hero acts out a perilous adventure in the 400 yards between his home, his local pub and the off-licence. With nervous system reduced to a series of involuntary twitches and reality reduced to a background hum of decades of half absorbed mindless daytime TV wittering. Can Endgame Man get home and make it through to Wednesday with only his spirit familiars – an endless trail of 75cl bottles of Glen’s vodka to guide him? Tune in to Boogaloo Radio at 2pm (9am EST) on the 8th December to find out.
Cast:
Jim Fry
Luke Haines
Scott King
With cameos from* Jayne MacDonald, Brian Eno, Martin Degville and the cast of Blankety Blank (1980).
Beat Poetry for Survivalists is the whimsical—and rockin’—new collaboration between Peter Buck, late of R.E.M.—maybe you’ve heard of them?—and onetime Auteur, author, artist and radio disc jockey Luke Haines. Owing to the fact that it’s got Haines singing lyrics that he himself wrote (topics include Pol Pot, Andy Warhol, the Carpenters, 80s hairdressers, occultist Jack Parsons, the hardships of ugly people, French rock and roll, the Enfield poltergeist and other typically Hainesian concerns) and utilizes the recorder, it sounds, no surprise, not unlike a typical Luke Haines album of recent vintage, but even better. I suspect this Peter Buck fellow might have had something to do with that. Buck’s well known to be a connoisseur of music with a massive record collection, so it’s no surprise that Haines was on his radar. The guitarist purchased one of Haines’ Lou Reed paintings (order yours here) and the rest is history…
[I just want to point out here that I, too, purchased one of Luke Haines’ Lou Reed paintings, just like Peter Buck did, but did Haines want to collaborate with me? I had the best idea ever, a sure-fire hit, an obviously Broadway-bound rock opera about the post fame “wilderness years” of Sweet’s Andy Priest—a tale of perseverance, comeback concerts at off-brand Florida amusement parks and a “Love is Like Oxygen” production number complete with oxygen tanks and wheelchairs—but with heart. I threw this out there to Haines on Twitter. Nuthin.’ Crickets. I can’t help it if I feel slighted, but I’m not bitter. I do like the painting, though.]
I asked Haines a few questions via email.
According to the early reviews, this collaboration occurred when Peter Buck bought one of your paintings. One of your Lous?
Luke Haines: So, yes. Peter Buck popped up in my inbox having just bought a painting of Lou Reed. We then started chatting on email. Peter’s pretty interested in Richard Nixon, so we chatted about “Tricky Dicky” and he mentioned that he liked my Baader Meinhof album!
Which one of you said “hey, we should do something together” first?
Luke Haines: It was me that suggested we record an album together. I’m pretty upfront. Mainly, because it’s so easy to contact people these days, I figure why the hell not? You can pretty much speak to anyone you want to collaborate with. Life is too short not to do these things.
How did you write songs together? Was it an over the internet kinda thing?
Luke Haines: The whole thing started with Peter sending me a guitar and drum machine demo that became “Jack Parsons.” I wandered round with the chords in my head and wrote lyrics and a melody. I added some extra bits: a synth, maybe another guitar. That’s how we built up the whole album.
Peter Buck by John Clark/Luke Haines by David Titlow
There are two other players credited. Was any of it recorded as a band?
Luke Haines: Scott McCaughey and Linda Pitmon. Everything was overdubbed. The drums went down in about two hours. Scott is from the Minus 5 and latter day REM. Linda is currently my fave drummer in the world.
Where was Scott and Linda’s contribution recorded?
Luke Haines: The whole thing was done over email. My stuff, then over to Peter and Scott. Then Linda overdubbed drums in Scott’s basement in Portland.
What about the touring band? Same players?
Luke Haines: Same line up. Three Americans and me. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with Americans. I like working with Americans, they have a very “can do” attitude. British musicians usually convince themselves out of doing anything. By the time they get to the pub they are suing each other.
There’s an American release of this one, right?
Luke Haines: Yep. First US release I’ve had for donkey’s. It’s out on Cherry Red in the UK and Omnivore Recordings in the US. CD, vinyl (that’s an elpee to us) and cassette tape. Really. March 6th.
Peter Buck has a reputation for having an amazing record collection. Did the two of you geek out over various rock snob matters and will he be a guest on your Righteous in the Afternoon radio show?
Luke Haines: The geek out is inevitable. Peter will come on my show. He has no choice.
This post was originally published here a little over a year ago, before ‘Life is Unfair,’ the Black Box Recorder box set, came out on vinyl. It was originally only a CD/DVD release and if you are like me, and don’t like CDs clogging up your living space, but are fine with records doing it, this is simply to alert you to the availability of this new iteration of ‘Life is Unfair.’
The new vinyl version of ‘Life is Unfair’ includes each of their three original albums on wax, the same odds & sods “BBREXIT” collection from CD box (still on a CD), a (very strong) live CD that is unique to this set, and the same DVD as before which includes a short live performance and the group’s three music videos. You might say it’s the catalogue raisonné of Black Box Recorder.
*****
In their 1973 occult cookbook The Third Mind, novelist William S. Burroughs and painter Brion Gysin discuss the notion that when two like-minded individuals are harmoniously tuned to the same creative task, a ghostly “third mind” will arise during the proceedings, almost independent of the original two participants and take everything to a higher level. It’s not just that two minds are better than one, they’re better than two minds, too:
“The third mind is the unseen collaborator, the superior mind constructed when two minds are put together.”
One plus one equals three in creative matters, in other words. It’s all very mathematical obviously and therefore cannot be disputed.
And so it was that one-time Jesus and Mary Chain drummer (and then absinthe importer) John Moore teamed up with the leader of the Auteurs, Luke Haines. Both were participating in a folk ensemble called Balloon—Haines on guitar, Moore on electric saw—and they decided to write some songs together. The initial results were promising and after the pair had composed a ditty titled “Girl Singing in the Wreckage” they needed a girl to sing it naturally and so enlisted another Balloon participant, vocalist Sarah Nixey.
Now Sarah Nixey happens to be the owner of one of the very, very best British female voices of all time (Nixey should be doing all of the voiceover work for British Airways and Jaguar. They ought to declare hers the official voice of Great Britain by royal decree or something, it’s just that perfectly English-sounding.) There is no one in pop—not one singer I can think of—who has her precise and exacting command over her instrument. Not only are her almost whispered gossamer vocals as resonant as Tibetan glass singing bowls, her diction is so astonishingly crisp and well-enunciated that it leaves her, frankly, without peer, as an archly ironic sprechgesang-singing posh girl rapper with one raised eyebrow.
With Nixey’s advantageous addition to what was already the working “trio” of Moore and Haines, this meant that the three of them together were now as good as seven or eight lone musicians, perhaps even an entire orchestra. Burroughs and Gysin never explained what came after two minds equalled three and math was never really my strong suit, but to be able to compose music knowing THAT VOICE would be interpreting your material must’ve spurred Moore and Haines to give it their all as songwriters. Writing to the strength of a chanteuse with the talents of Sarah Nixey would have an exponentially positive effect on any musical endeavor and thus was born Black Box Recorder, already greater than the sum of its thoroughbred parts before the project even gets out of the gate.
With Nixey fronting the group this meant that the two cynical bastards writing the music had to channel the perspective of a female of about her age (early twenties) in the lyrics she’d sing and so over the course of their three albums, a sort of morbid, spoiled, narcissistic Sloane Ranger character develops while the lush minimalism of the music reminds one of Air or Portishead. Black Box Recorder’s darker lyrical preoccupations—Ballardian musings on car crashes and “The English Motorway System,” police digging up bodies in a trendy neighborhood, swimming with the ghosts of murdered Victorian-era children—could be seen as representing evil Cousin Serena to Saint Etienne’s sunnier Samantha Stevens.
As a remarkably assured debut album England Made Me compares favorably to something like Please by the Pet Shop Boys: cynical, funny, intelligent with sonic invention and arrangements of the highest caliber. (England Made Me is also as perfect a soundtrack to the Tony Blair era as the PSB’s first album was for Thatcher’s final years in power. I fully expect that future filmmakers producing period pieces about pre and post millennial Britain will ransack BBR’s discography song by song.) Here’s their first single, “Child Psychology,” a catchy number about a world-weary six-year-old girl who simply stops talking:
“Child Psychology” was blacklisted for radio play by most UK stations and MTV and it was released as a single in America just one week after the Columbine massacre, ensuring its quick demise on the US pop charts as well. If you found yourself wondering “How did I miss this?” just watch the video and you’ll instantly know why. England Made Me‘s title track, in which the protagonist tells of a dream that she’s killed a man and left his body in a trunk, didn’t burn up the charts here or there either, but it’s also a damned good song:
It was with their classic all-killer-no-filler second album The Facts of Life in 2000 that saw BBR release their sole chart hit. “The Facts of Life,” an aerial view of the birds & the bees and DNA (“there’s no master plan”) went top 20 and the group was invited to perform on TV’s Top of the Pops. As told in the pages of Haines’ Post Everything: Outsider Rock and Roll his second memoir of life in the music business, aiming to create a hit record with the aid of science, he and Moore forensically autopsied and then back-engineered the Billie Piper earworm “Honey to the Bee” to come up with what they—and the public, for a few weeks at least—thought was an irresistibly catchy pop tune.
On Luke Haines’ 2016 album Smash the System there is an affectionate paean to the Incredible String Band (“The Incredible String Band were an unholy act/They sang like a couple of weasels trapped in a sack”) complete with toy piano and kazoo. The song extolls ISB’s virtues, suggesting that although they might be a bit difficult to “get into” that the listener might want to try anyway. As someone who has always flipped right past the ISB albums, uninterested in this (I thought) goofy hippie shit, but who is always looking for something “new” to listen to, the fact that I liked Haines’ song about ISB so much (a song that was also obviously mimicking their style) caused me to take his advice and pick up their 1971 two LP “best of” Relics Of The Incredible String Band.
Cut to me listening to little else other than ISB for several months. As Haines promised in his Record Collector Magazine column, with ISB “once you’re in, you’re in for life.” (Verdict = truth.)
Now I generally HATE radio. I usually know exactly what I want to listen to and do not require any assistance from some rando on the radio dial. For my entire life, I have not listened to, or in any way been attracted to, radio. I don’t ever listen in the car or anywhere else and I never have. Until now. Since the first one, I’ve actually made a point to listen to each of Haines’ “Righteous in the Afternoon” shows live as they happen and it’s always big fun. You can tell he’s amusing himself, certainly, with disrespectful spoken word poetry interludes about Don Letts and Midge Ure, singing along with things and liberally adding cowbell to “improve” certain songs. He once passed along to his listeners two of the dirtiest jokes he’d ever heard, both of them courtesy of John Cale.
Haines, with his hard-earned rock snobbery and good taste in music is doing the public a service. During his weekly two hours of “Righteous in the Afternoon” I’ve personally found out about more “new” music than from any other recent source.
For instance…
“The Green Manalishi (With the Two Pronged Crown)” by Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.
In their 1973 occult cookbook The Third Mind, novelist William S. Burroughs and painter Brion Gysin discuss the notion that when two like-minded individuals are harmoniously tuned to the same creative task, a ghostly “third mind” will arise during the proceedings, almost independent of the original two participants and take everything to a higher level. It’s not just that two minds are better than one, they’re better than two minds, too:
“The third mind is the unseen collaborator, the superior mind constructed when two minds are put together.”
One plus one equals three in creative matters, in other words. It’s all very mathematical obviously and therefore cannot be disputed.
And so it was that one-time Jesus and Mary Chain drummer (and then absinthe importer) John Moore teamed up with the leader of the Auteurs, Luke Haines. Both were participating in a folk ensemble called Balloon—Haines on guitar, Moore on electric saw—and they decided to write some songs together. The initial results were promising and after the pair had composed a ditty titled “Girl Singing in the Wreckage” they needed a girl to sing it naturally and so enlisted another Balloon participant, vocalist Sarah Nixey.
Now Sarah Nixey happens to be the owner of one of the very, very best British female voices of all time (Nixey should be doing all of the voiceover work for British Airways and Jaguar. They ought to declare hers the official voice of Great Britain by royal decree or something, it’s just that perfectly English-sounding.) There is no one in pop—not one singer I can think of—who has her precise and exacting command over her instrument. Not only are her almost whispered gossamer vocals as resonant as Tibetan glass singing bowls, her diction is so astonishingly crisp and well-enunciated that it leaves her, frankly, without peer, as an archly ironic sprechgesang-singing posh girl rapper with one raised eyebrow.
With Nixey’s advantageous addition to what was already the working “trio” of Moore and Haines, this meant that the three of them together were now as good as seven or eight lone musicians, perhaps even an entire orchestra. Burroughs and Gysin never explained what came after two minds equalled three and math was never really my strong suit, but to be able to compose music knowing THAT VOICE would be interpreting your material must’ve spurred Moore and Haines to give it their all as songwriters. Writing to the strength of a chanteuse with the talents of Sarah Nixey would have an exponentially positive effect on any musical endeavor and thus was born Black Box Recorder, already greater than the sum of its thoroughbred parts before the project even gets out of the gate.
With Nixey fronting the group this meant that the two cynical bastards writing the music had to channel the perspective of a female of about her age (early twenties) in the lyrics she’d sing and so over the course of their three albums, a sort of morbid, spoiled, narcissistic Sloane Ranger character develops while the lush minimalism of the music reminds one of Air or Portishead. Black Box Recorder’s darker lyrical preoccupations—Ballardian musings on car crashes and “The English Motorway System,” police digging up bodies in a trendy neighborhood, swimming with the ghosts of murdered Victorian-era children—could be seen as representing evil Cousin Serena to Saint Etienne’s sunnier Samantha Stevens.
As a remarkably assured debut album England Made Me compares favorably to something like Please by the Pet Shop Boys: cynical, funny, intelligent with sonic invention and arrangements of the highest caliber. (England Made Me is also as perfect a soundtrack to the Tony Blair era as the PSB’s first album was for Thatcher’s final years in power. I fully expect that future filmmakers producing period pieces about pre and post millennial Britain will ransack BBR’s discography song by song.) Here’s their first single, “Child Psychology,” a catchy number about a world-weary six-year-old girl who simply stops talking:
“Child Psychology” was blacklisted for radio play by most UK stations and MTV and it was released as a single in America just one week after the Columbine massacre, ensuring its quick demise on the US pop charts as well. If you found yourself wondering “How did I miss this?” just watch the video and you’ll instantly know why.
I Sometimes Dream Of Glue is the terrifically idiosyncratic new concept album by Luke Haines, he of The Auteurs, Baader Meinhof and Black Box Recorder infamy. A “solo” album in the solo-est sense of the word (he wrote, plays and sings nearly everything on it, and produced) the mostly acoustic music is an amusing counterpoint to the head scratching concept. “Solvents Cure the Ego” is one of the prettiest songs Haines has ever recorded, to cite one example, and sounds like like finely spun gossamer blowing in a soft breeze when you’ve got your face deep in a paper bag of Tamiya model cement.
As frequent readers of this blog (and my wife) might know, I am a huge fan of Haines’ music (I go on about this at length here) and I rate this album as a minor masterpiece in his sprawling canon, albeit an absolutely bloody-minded one. He never disappoints.
It started sometime after World War II – in the late 1940’s. A convoy of British Special Services trucks had been dispatched to RAF Middlewych, their cargo – 10 tonnes of experimental solvent liquid. Sticky and deadly. The mission – to drop the toxic liquid over Germany and finish the job of carving up Europe for good. The trucks never made it to their airfield destination, coming off the road – most probably helped by saboteurs – some five miles out of London…
Just off the Westway, in the motorway sidings, you can see a small sign. Actually you probably can’t see the sign as it is the size of a child’s fingernail clipping. The sign says “Glue Town.” The name of a village. There is little or no documentation of Glue Town. You will not find any information about it on the 21st Century internet. Gluetown is a rural settlement born out of mutation. Of the estimated 500 or so dwellers, no one is thought to be over 2 1⁄2 inches tall. The citizens of Glue Town exist on a diet of solvent abuse and perpetual horniness. The residents only leave to carry out daring night-time ‘glue raids’ on Shepherds Bush newsagent shops. On a tiny screen in the town centre, an old Betamax cassette of Michael Bentine’s Potty Time plays on a loop all day and all night. The reduced size villagers go about their daily business pondering whether the lessons of Potty Time can show them a way out of their drudge lives of sexual abandonment and human sacrifice…
Dangerous Minds: What inspired I Sometimes Dream Of Glue‘s concept? Is it autobiographical?
Luke Haines: Years ago, I wrote a song called “Country Life,” it came out on an EP. That song was about living in a model village. I’d always liked the song and the idea and felt I could take it further. Last year I took a trip to Southend. There’s a pier with a small railway on it. A photo of me was taken on the train. I laughed when I saw the photo and called it “Angry Man On A Small Train.” That became the first song from the new album—and out of that came the concept…
Photo: Becky Millar
Dangerous Minds: I thought the train would be smaller. Well where does solvent abuse fit into the equation then? Were you sniffing glue while you were riding on this (supposedly) small train?
Luke Haines: Haha. I liked the idea of an 00 scale population, as opposed to the miniature inhabitants of a model village, so the populace became tiny Airfix models...and what do you need to stick your models together? Glue. And who doesn’t like sniffing glue?
Dangerous Minds: It’s true! What’s your favorite brand?
Luke Haines: Unibond. I dreamt that Vic Godard was sponsored by Unibond. Superglue is good as well. The lord of all adhesives.
Dangerous Minds: Have you ever tried plumber’s glue? The stuff they put in metal pipes to seal them at the joints is a good time. I woke up in the Bronx, barefoot.
Luke Haines: I have not. But I like the idea of a good time. On this album I feel that I’m giving solvent abuse a makeover. I’m making it acceptable for the millenial creatives. Bloggers will be blogging about glue sniffing in an urban yet pastoral setting. There will be scabs around the nose but they will be sexy scabs.
Dangerous Minds: Exactly! Glue sniffing needn’t be associated with the likes of the Ramones, Diana Ross and UB40. So it is autobiographical, then. I just wanted to establish that.
But the music’s a bit of a departure for you—more pastoral as you say—isn’t it?
Luke Haines: Lyrically it is the harshest thing I’ve done in a while, but I wanted the music to be kind of like kids music. Recorders and harmoniums. Not naive, let’s call it surreal brutalism.
With seemingly every single article written about him for the better part of the past two decades declaring Luke Haines “underappreciated” or referring to him as England’s “best kept secret” or some such, you might be forgiven for assuming that Haines is a bit of a cult figure in his native Britain.
And if he’s a cult figure there, then what does that say about his profile in America? Regrettably, he doesn’t really seem to have much of one here. Not that this is his fault. It’s your fault. But it’s mine, too. I’ll explain.
So WHO, you are (probably) asking, is this Luke Haines character anyway? In the 90s Haines was the leader of the Auteurs, an incendiary guitar-based group (with a “cello player”) who emerged fully-formed with the Mercury Prize-nominated New Wave (they lost to Suede) in 1993. The Auteurs’ high point comes with their Steve Albini-produced masterpiece After Murder Park in 1996, in which Haines perfects the art of softly singing as if he is approaching you slowly and deliberately with a drawn knife and the crack, well-rehearsed band generally blow the doors off of any other rock and roll group making records that year. It’s the equal of any classic album you can name and surely the subject of an upcoming 33 ⅓ series book.
I caught on very, very slowly to Luke Haines’ work myself. Although I actually bought my first Haines CD in 1996—and absolutely loved it—it was the Baader Meinhof concept album, which was not released under his name and didn’t have especially informative liner notes. I did not delve any deeper into the Auteurs at the time as I had the idea that they were some kinda Britpop group and that wasn’t my cup of PG Tips and stepped-on cocaine. Had I done so, I’d have seriously freaked out and Haines would have immediately entered my pantheon of godlike geniuses. But I did not dabble further despite seriously digging Baader Meinhof and playing the shit out of it. (Frankly as much as I love that album, it’s not something that one necessarily requires more of.)
Several years later I became infatuated with the Black Box Recorder number “Andrew Ridgley” (sic) but I did not make any connection to the Baader Meinhof album. It was only when I picked up Haines’ (must read, utterly essential) autobiography Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall that I finally figured it all out. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone reading that (side-splittingly hilarious) book without wanting to hear the accompanying musical soundtrack. And I do mean ALL OF IT. And this is the musical rabbit hole that I’ve fallen into for the year or so. I honestly don’t think that I have ever listened to (pretty much) just one artist this intently, or for this long. (The only time even close is when I first discovered Big Youth.)
In fact, our puppy basically only heard the After Murder Park album for the first six months of his life and to this day whenever he hears the first chords of the first song (”Light Aircraft on Fire”) he goes absolutely berserk sprinting around the house like a shot, with great violence, like he’s a slobbering cartoon Tasmanian devil. Another Auteurs’ album opener (Now I’m a Cowboy‘s “Lenny Valentino”) has a similar effect on him: First he runs around frantically, and then when Haines starts singing, he stops, points his nose straight up to the ceiling and begins to howl along. Even if his cute canine vocalizing is a bit out of tune, clearly he approves when I slap these particular elpees on the turntable and he lets me know it. (I’ve always wanted a dog with good taste in music. He’s a big Zappa head too, but not the later “comedy” stuff, more an original Mothers fan. Good boy!)
Portrait of the artist as a young man
So yeah, Luke Haines’ relative obscurity in America is surprising, given not only the stellar standard of, well, just about every single thing he’s ever released (even his mediocre songs—judged by his standards, I mean—are still pretty fucking great) but the breadth of his long career and the depth of his quite extensive and extremely high quality back catalog. You’d surely think that many more people on this side of the Atlantic would have picked up on him along the way, as he’s been active since the late 80s. Haines is the ultimate “rock snob” heroic artist, being an intense rock snob himself, he’s probably the most culturally literate musician of his generation and in my (n)ever so humble opinion, he’s the very best English songwriter of this era, ahead of Jarvis Cocker (not prolific enough) and Momus (too eccentric) who are the sole two I’d place in his rarified company. If you find yourself constitutionally unable to read MOJO magazine—and do not enjoy music made by “the young people”—then Luke Haines is likely to be your savior from all of that.
I mean, someone has to be the best British rock musician. That only makes sense, right? And I happen to think Luke Haines is the very best. Comparing him to most of today’s pop stars is like comparing a master mason to someone capable of building a competent lean-to shack. Like comparing John Dos Passos to Dan Brown or Peter Cook to Dudley Moore. It just took me a damned long time to finally realize what I was missing out on and I’m supposed to know about such matters of cultural importance. [“But it’s my job!” he exclaimed plaintively. On the other hand, hey I got to discover one of the best extensive back catalogs in recent musical history for the first time at my advanced age, so lucky me.]
I took an informal poll of several friends—rock snobs all of ‘em, including record store, recording studio and label owners—to see how many were Luke Haines fans besides me. There was exactly one (and he is by far the hippest guy who I have ever met in my entire life, so this was no surprise). The rest answered as you would doing the “sort of, not really” motion with your hand and squinting or simply ignored the query entirely. (If no less of a maven’s maven than our own Howie Pyro has only recently gotten turned on to Luke Haines’ music himself, well that makes me feel slightly less out of it.)
One friend of mine asked “He’s really English isn’t he?” Well… yes, he is that—which is nothing to be ashamed of most of the time—but it’s not like Haines is a Marmite sandwich either. If you’ve ever dug the Kinks or Pulp (or Monty Python or Stewart Lee), you shouldn’t have a problem with any of it. Admittedly I’m probably the most likely Yankee Haines fan you are apt to find: around the same age as he is, Haines and I clearly grew up listening to the same bands and our pop culture obsessions seem fairly congruent. I also lived in Britain for a while, so a song about Enoch Powell isn’t going to fly over my head, nor would one alluding to the Yorkshire Ripper for that matter (although I did find myself googling “Bugger Bognor,” Kendo Nagasaki and Parsley the Lion, but I promise you that I am better off for it). If “really English” is a problem for you, then don’t start with an album like 9½ Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s & Early ‘80s—which might be described as “really English” to be sure, but mark my words you will get around to that one eventually—and instead dive in with his concept album New York in the 70s, which has songs about Lou Reed, Jim Carroll, the NY Dolls, William S. Burroughs and Alan Vega. (A certain percentage of our readers who have never heard of Luke Haines until today just decided that they absolutely need to hear this album right about fuckin’ now. They are correct.)
Haines does paintings of Lou Reed, the Monkees and British wrestlers of the late 70s and early 80s and sells them via his Outside Art website for a reasonable price. He’s currently taking commissions for Xmas.
Another pal asked whose reputation would Luke Haines compare to, in terms of other obscure English musicians, for American fans? Andy Partridge? No, not really as XTC had several hits in America and the Auteurs never did. Julian Cope? Kind of, but he’s also too well known here. Bill Nelson maybe? Nope. Gavin Friday? (shakes head, plus he’s Irish). Roy Wood? Robyn Hitchcock? Matt Johnson? (Definitely not Matt Johnson.) He’s got much in common with Elvis Costello, in particular his often bilious and spiteful lyrical content, but Elvis Costello wishes he could write a song like “How Could I Be Wrong,” “Big Daddy Got A Casio VL Tone” or “I’m a Rich Man’s Toy” (and besides that, he’s far too famous). The only one who readily comes to mind (for me) is probably the great Neil Innes. Like Haines, he’s got a very specific thing that he does—brilliant at being himself at all times, even in character—and both men are multi-instrumentalists of the highest order and master lyricists. Both can mimic and ape the style of other musicians with great precision when they want to (Haines’ take on Suicide or the Incredible String Band is every bit as good as Innes’ wicked Elton John or his justly celebrated Beatles pastiche) and they can both make a decent living doing their own brands of “outsider music” and keeping themselves amused. This is not to imply that their music is in any way similar, as that is not the case. (There is no American artist whatsoever—none that I can think of at least—with whom Haines compares career-wise or otherwise in case you are wondering.)
Although divvying it up between the Auteurs, Black Box Recorder and his solo work would seem to make the most obvious sense, Haines himself has further subdivided his solo career into three distinct phases: “professional rock ‘n’ roll,” his “no man’s land” period and his “unprofessional rock ‘n’ roll” period. Professional rock ‘n’ roll would encompass the Auteurs, BBR and his early solo efforts until around 2003, while his no man’s land era might be best described as his “I have no idea about what’s currently going on with popular music and cannot give less of a fuck phase” phase (which included two years working on an unproduced piece of musical theater called “Property”) and this lasted until about 2008. After that comes “the best part of the trip” as per none other than Jim Morrison hisself. This is the bit where the artist is freed from external constraints and does whatever he or she wants to do, i.e. the shamanic stage of rock ‘n’ roll. (Think Robert Calvert’s Captain Lockheed And The Starfighters for an historical example of the blueprint Haines often follows). It was here when Haines recorded his NYC rock ‘n’ roll concept album, his moody instrumental analog synth opus British Nuclear Bunkers and Adventures in Dementia, his fifteen-minute long “micro-opera” about a Mark E. Smith impersonator whose Winnebago vacation comes to a swift end when his caravan hits Ian Stuart of the white power skinhead band Skrewdriver. With the release of last year’s ritual magick agit prop longplayer Smash the System, Haines’ magick Maoist magus initiation was complete. And what have YOU done, lately?
If I’ve not convinced you yet that you need to take a deep dive into the discography of Luke Haines right now, then buddy, I simply cannot help you. He’s making some of the very, very best (and smartest) music of the past three decades, and most American rock fans—including the very people people who would appreciate it THE MOST (like my own circle of rock snob pals, most who remain indifferent to my insisting they get on the Haines train, stat)—have never even heard of the guy.
That’s unfortunate, but still it’s an opportunity: When is the last time you discovered a “new” artist with a back catalog of well over twenty stone classic albums going back 25 years? A discography that references by name Peter Hammill, Klaus Kinski, Marc Bolan, ISB, Ulrike Meinhof’s missing brain, Gary Clail(?!), Lenny Bruce, rocker with a messiah complex Vince Taylor, Aleister Crowley, Bruce Lee, Kenneth Anger, the Viennese Actionists, Moholy-Nagy, Roman Polanski, the Monkees and the aforementioned former Wham! guitarist? On one album cover he’s dressed as Hugo Ball. He’s even got a song about the “Silent Twins,” June and Jennifer Gibbons; a bonkers children’s album narrated by Nighty Night’s evil genius Julia Davis (where Nick Lowe is a badger); and a song where he openly fantasizes about murdering British artist Sarah Lucas.
I could go on and on, but I’ve done my bit. Now it’s up to you.
On election night my wife and I laid in bed with the TV on and our laptops open happily watching the results of the vote come in and eating junk food. When the stable odometer on the New York Times interactive widget went from pinning the left side with a 98% likelihood of Hillary Clinton winning to flipping abruptly to the extreme right (see what I did there?) for a 95% chance of a Trump win, we both figured something was wrong with the Times’ website. After reloading the page a few times, and seeing it remain in favor of Trump, it seemed that the television coverage was telling the same surreal story. We sat—like most Americans still possessing a majority of their teeth—silently numbed in a state of profoundly bewildered and demoralized shock. When it became obvious that fucking swine from all across the country had suddenly sprouted wings and taken flight—I got over 200 extremely nasty anti-Semitic tweets hurled at me immediately on Twitter (and I’m not even Jewish) from alt.right goofballs with Pepe the Frog avatars—my wife broke the silence saying simply:
“Dangerous Minds has to change. We need to be harder and tougher. Rougher-edged. We can’t blog about frivolous frou-frou things anymore. We have to switch up what we’re doing to reflect what just happened.”
I’d been more or less thinking the same thing, but my thoughts were amorphous whereas hers were much more sharply defined. Looking at Twitter, it seemed evident to me that within a matter of minutes a new American counterculture was spontaneously forming. As much as America had just gone full bore Idiocracy, in other quarters things seemed to be quickly getting very Mr. Robot. I offered some weak gallows humor saying that Trump might even ironically be good for a business proposition like Dangerous Minds, but she just groaned. (You’ll forgive me, I hope, but this is where my thoughts naturally drifted. Of course, unlike a lot of people, I also had the luxury of not having to worry about my undocumented abuela when America flunked its fucking IQ test…)
The next day, waking up with what felt like I had a toxic hangover of international proportions—I don’t drink—my wife who very seldom drinks herself, decided that she needed to be around people and joined several of her friends to commiserate at a bar that opened up at 9am. There was no way I wanted to be around strangers. Especially drunk people. Even worse weepy drunk liberal people…
Had fucking bullyboy Biff Tannen really beaten Tracy Flick?
I hated everything and everyone. I was glad to be alone.
After rolling an epic joint, I cranked up Smash the System, the fantastic new Luke Haines album, LOUD and listened to it all the way through and then again, and then again and then again on repeat. I don’t mean to imply that I rocked out, but fuck it, I rocked out. I’m not ashamed to say that. Pretty soon I felt, to my surprise, pretty okay. Like Haines was a revolutionary sonic sorcerer who had blown all the bad shit out of my brain. Smash the System was the perfect soundtrack for the day after Donald Trump was elected leader of the free world. I highly recommend it, maybe it’ll work for you, too.
I messaged Luke Haines on Twitter requesting an email interview and he kindly obliged me.
Richard Metzger: The obvious first question has got to be “Any thoughts on what happened last night?”
Luke Haines: So, the American Election. I may not be the right person to ask (who is?) as I believe in personal anarchy and magick. But here’s a few observations anyway:
The Brexit comparison isn’t entirely relevant. Brexit was actually a subtle bit of class war hijinks played out by a few members of the Bullingdon Club who bore long term grudges against one another. No one holds grudges better than the English Upper class—the Queen mother was said to have smiled with satisfaction very, very briefly at Wallis Simpson’s funeral. So, one of our ruling overloads lost out at a game of milky biscuit one night in the dorms at Eton, and the country got the brunt of it. Brexit was sold to the British public under false pretences—no one wanted to leave Europe (only Farage) The British public were sold the dummy, and they bought it hook line and sinker.
Trump is a businessman (not my tribe, if I had a tribe). He is also a sociopath (more understandable). He’ll try to “run” America like a business. Buying up shit, running shit into the ground, exploiting people—if he’s allowed to do this then he won’t lose interest in being El Prez. The best hope I guess, is that, he won’t be allowed to do that and he’ll lose interest…
Democracy only works when there is equality. Without equality democracy seems pretty broken.
Apparently Nigel Farage is said to be hopping on a plane to come over here to advise Trump! You guys can keep that asshole, we’ve got enough already. Was Smash the System a reaction to Brexit? Or not? It seems like you’ve been up for smashing the system for your entire career.
No. Not a reaction to Brexit. Although the album cover and video with the marauding Morris men was. The logical conclusion to the populist idea of Brexit would mean that no one in the UK would be allowed to leave their home town, or possibly the house where they were born. It’s “Autumn Almanac” by the Kinks as Modern Folk Politics.
Are you going through a bit of an Aleister Crowley phase?
Crowley was a bad man. I wouldn’t mess with the dark stuff—I might end up making a bad Stranglers album.
The unicursal hexagram on the CD packaging isn’t a nod to Crowley?
