No. 4 - Ninth, Peter Murphy (2011)

(Over a series of twenty short posts – one per week for the remaining weeks of this decade – I am aiming to highlight in vaguely chronological order some of the most important and influential releases in the goth/post-punk/darkwave genre of the 2010’s). This post was written before the singer's very recent health scare - get well soon, Peter!

The so-called “Godfather of Goth” Peter Murphy had released eight solo albums when Bauhaus briefly reformed in 2005, moving from his college radio-oriented debut (1986) to the Turkish-influenced Dust in 2002, before reverting to a lighter, pop sound on Unshattered two years later. The raw live-in-the-studio Bauhaus reformation album Go Away White might not have been a commercial or even uniformly critical success, but it did seem to provide Murphy with the creative jolt he required, and after an interesting digital EP of covers (including Transmission and Hurt), he returned with a new solo outing, the appropriately-named Ninth in the summer of 2011.

Bauhaus fans who had become tired of the rather saccharine theatrically-voiced alternative pop that had become his stock-in-trade over the previous quarter of a century would have been relieved to hear Murphy tell Wired News in 2010 that the new album would be “a continuation of the Go Away White trajectory -  it has testosterone pouring out of it.”

Opening track Velocity Bird certainly lived up to that proud but unlikely boast, continuing the visceral lo-fi thrill of Go Away White’s Adrenaline and oozing an Iggy meets Ziggy swagger that nods knowingly at two of the major influences of the original post-punk movement, with Murphy’s unmistakable croon topping off a bold statement of intent. For all their lack of classical training, all of the iconic singers of the post-punk era – Curtis, Coleman, Eldritch, Sioux, Smith, Cave et al - had their own distinctive vocal style, something which their more derivative second generation counterparts lacked to a large extent, but which the third generation have in instantly recognisable spades (think Laufey Soffia of Kaelan Mikla or Fenne Kuppens of Whispering Sons).

Other tracks on Ninth harked back to the earlier era Bauhaus albums that had helped to set the template for the genre: by way of example, the verse of lead single I Spit Roses has a great, angular guitar riff over which a multi-tracked bi-octave Murphy enuniciates the kind of nonsense lyrical wordplay that harks back to his 80’s finest :

Shake-shack, ring the bell, 
Petty, pretty, they shall swell,

Swell kid-like, kid-like squeak, 
Was it a trick or was it a treat?

before blanding out into a more melodious sweeping chorus in the style of his more anonymous mid-90’s solo albums.

There are more Bauhaus tropes on other tracks: for example it’s impossible not to feel some pangs of dark delight in the opening section of the more unhinged Peace to Each, and there’s a Bela Lugosi’s Dead meets This Corrosion feel to the uber-goth chorus to Memory Go, both songs featuring excellent guitar work from the ubiquitous Mark Gemini-Thwaite, whose assured and creative style has enhanced many of the decade's better albums. Other tracks have a softer focus but still showcase Murphy as an accomplished artist at his lyrical and performing best.

The resultant praise for Ninth saw the singer quickly back in the studio for an even rawer 2014 follow-up album, Lion, a more challenging listen that revealed that Murphy continues to take risks, although overall it was a more patchy affair redeemed by the epic The Ghost of Shokan Lake. Disappointingly, Murphy has since retreated into being smoething of a nostalgia act, playing well-remunerated US residencies going through his extensive back-catalogue at the rate of an album a night, with luicrously-priced VIP tickets keeping his pension fund topped up whilst reducing the need for new output.

Another (loosely) post-punk artist who has enjoyed an even bigger and certainly more surprising critical comeback in the 2010’s was Gary Numan, the Estuary android-voiced synth wizard who had ultimately become more famous for his unfortunate flying escapades than for his music, which at least had been rehabilitated in terms of reputation by being name-checked by everyone from industrial rock legends to house producers. Few would have been prepared however for the power of his 2013 album Splinter, a confessional set of songs whose subtitle Songs from a Broken Mind hinted at the mental anguish that lay behind the deeply personal lyrics. When I walked out of a ludicrously pretentious Numan gig in the mid-1980's I would have bet my life against the fact that I'd hear myself desperately asking the bemused HMV shop assistant if they had the new Gary Numan album at HMV some thirty years later.

Featuring for the most part some very familiar chord progressions and lyrical themes of alienation, it was the bass-heavy full-on assault of tracks like I Am Dust and Love Hurt Bleed which caught the attention of alternative club DJ’s and critics alike, revealing a pulsing Nine Inch Nails influenced beat and even a rock guitar sound courtesy of Robin Finck (NIN, G’n’R) which was given freer Jamiroquaiesque wig-out form on the most experimental and stand-out track of the set, We’re The Unforgiven.

Whilst still not exactly goth, even with the seemingly obligatory Edwarniana steam-punk visual accoutrements, this album certainly re-established Numan’s reputation amongst the coldwave/darkwave cognoscenti, and similar recent album Savage has continued his upward spiral.

With some of the greats of the original era belatedly rediscovering their mojo and upping their game in the mid-2010s, others would soon be inspired to build on the firm foundations of the previous post-punk generations and develop the genre further...