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!

Good lord, it’s worse than I thought…

All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out, out now on colored vinyl via Cherry Red and Drastic Plastic
 

 
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.

Beat Poetry for Survivalists is out on March 6th.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘I Sometimes Dream Of Glue’: New Luke Haines concept album about very tiny, very horny glue sniffers
Attention rock snobs: Dig Luke Haines’ righteous outsider rock & roll radio show
Mythic motherfucking rock and roll: Why Luke Haines is the best British rock musician of our time
Life is Unfair: Black Box Recorder want you to kill yourself or get over it
Tourettes Karaoke: R.E.M.‘s ‘Losing My Religion’
‘Just Like a Movie’: Young Michael Stipe covers Velvet Underground in clip from R.E.M. ‘Holy Grail’
A heckler stirs up R.E.M. during fabled 1985 gig (and the band nearly fights the heckler!)
A very young R.E.M. gets noticed by the NY Rocker, March 1981
Legendary R.E.M. performances captured before they were famous, 1981 (with a DM exclusive)
R.E.M.’s Mike Mills on ‘Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee’
70s Michael Stipe in drag at ‘Rocky Horror’
Michael Stipe’s pipe!