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| Go Away White | 
 enlarge | Artist: Bauhaus
Label: Bauhaus Music
Category: Music
List Price: $16.98
Buy New: $10.14
You Save: $6.84 (40%)
New (46) Used (13) Collectible (1) from $7.84
Avg. Customer Rating:  41 reviews
Sales Rank: 19232
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 5.5 x 4.8 x 0.3
MPN: 1
UPC: 891377001260
EAN: 0891377001260
ASIN: B0012IXBPA
Release Date: March 4, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW Factory Sealed - Ready to be shipped within 24 hrs from California - Average 5 workdays delivery time - Excellent customer service - Buy with confidence!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Unfinished, 2-dimensional, ego-driven, but still powerful. March 17, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This CD might better be titled as "Peter Murphy rehearsing with his backing band". Murphy's singing is as powerful as ever, and there's the problem. My favorite Bauhaus CD ("Burning From the Inside") worked so well because illness required Daniel Ash, David J and Kevin Haskins to pick up the slack and sing on over half the album, trying many styles to see what worked. And usually it did (I personally love David J's "Who Killed Mr. Moonlight"). Even on "Mask" and "The Sky's Gone Out", there was a BAND feeling. On this CD, I felt that Murphy hijacked the proceedings every step of the way.
The album is clearly unfinished. You can hear ad-libs, audible band cues during "Mirror Remains", as well as coughing. Most of these songs sound like very well-recorded demos with a small amount of overdubs. There are few dramatic shifts in dynamics, middle-eight breaks, the unexpected sonic tricks that the best Bauhaus could be counted on.
The best song on the CD - "The Dog's A Vapour" - has the sonic detail of "Hot Trip To Heaven", and is atmospheric, tense and cathartic. Perfect. I first suspected that track was recorded and completed early on, before fighting ended the recording sessions prematurely. An Amazon reader has informed me that the "Dog" is not new at all - it was recorded and released 8 years ago on a "Heavy Metal 2000" (ick!) compilation. So now that I know the new best song isn't even part of this recording project, I can say I like the effort put into this CD even less.
Outside of the wry "Too Much 21st Century", The CD lacks humour, which is surprising, as all Bauhaus CDs have humour if you know how to hear it. This one is dour and lyrically pretentious - again, like Murphy's solo work.
The weak "Saved" sounds like a Peter Murphy track from "Dust". "Black Stone Heart" does little for me, though the Joy Division-style keyboard helps.
For you downloaders, the best moments are "Adrenaline", "Endless Summer of the Damned", especially "The Dog's A Vapour".
Loud, sometimes kinda exciting, but this is not Bauhaus the band. Maybe the studio conflict will lead to a new Love & Rockets CD - that I would look foward to.
 WORTH THE WAIT ? - NO April 5, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Some will call this album brilliant just because it's Bauhaus .
Bauhaus have always been a combination of moments of complete self indulgence interspersed through some of the best songs ever .
Take away the best songs ever and that's what your left with here .
There are a few decent moments ( The Dogs A Vapour) .
But I think the individual members have had too long to follow their own sound - some of these songs sound like Love and Rockets with Pete singing .The undercurrent of menace and anger has completely gone .
Maybe being such a huge fan of their work my expectations were too high
 Selfish jerks. Should've stayed in your coffins. March 10, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
"It's good stuff. I think it's still relevant . . . it's not like a Zeppelin thing," said Peter Murphy when asked about if he felt like Bauhaus was a burden by DJ George Gimarc after discussing meeting Bela Lugosi's daughter in the early 1990s.
Time's change, and apparently quickly, as nine years after the Gotham live album release and an insulting middle slot between Peaches and Nine Inch Nails on the 2006 Summer Tour, band relations broke down for undisclosed reasons during the recording of this album, and apparently, irrevocably so.
I've not been this disappointed by a band that I love since there wasn't room enough in the Velvets for Lou's ego and Cale, Sterl, and Mo to keep it together for a stateside tour.
Setting the corpse alight after firing rounds into it is Go Away White and it's everything you'd want in a Bauhaus album. Every song is an instant classic. The "Endless Summer" track previewed during the 2006 tour may finally be heard above the fidelity of a mobile phone recording and it is majestic. David J's bass and Peter Murphy's vocals duke it out for which can go the lowest, ending in a draw somewhere in the planet's core. Danny Ash's guitar slashing steps out of the Wayback Machine with Peabody and Sherman from 1982. The only thing really different is Kevin Haskins' drums, higher in the mix and lacking the gated effect prevalent in the band's Beggar's Banquet recordings.
In a word, perfect.
And yet, it's hard to disassociate the album from the circumstances, knowing that this is it and there could have been more, not because of the untimely death of one of the members but because an individual or individuals thought themselves larger than the whole of the band. Perhaps bittersweet is better than perfect as a descriptor, but then it makes sense to react the way I and others have to Bauhaus' "Hello, I Must Be Going" mentality. Goth isn't supposed to make the listeners cheerful.
Signed,
epsteinsmutha
Approach without expectation and you'll enjoy it more..... March 27, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
When a band with a loyal fanbase reunites, it is virtually impossible for it to escape a heavy burden of expectation from its fans. Many expect the band to be just the same as before; others want to see the band be similar to how it was, but only "somehow better"....In either case, the band is in a horrible trap: if it replicates the sound and atmosphere of its old records, some will slag it off as being frozen in time, an oldies act, or irrelevant with nothing new to say. If they branch out and try a new direction, even if in small baby-steps, fans will criticize them for being different and not as good as before, forgetting who they were, selling out, etc. etc.
Bauhaus were so unique and influential in their heyday, and they have such a devoted cult-like fan base and reputation, that they are saddled with more than a crushing load of expectation anytime they get together; and such expectations certainly have been brought to bear on this record. In my view, it is both similar and different from their older work and it also reflects and incorporates bits of the work the members have done in the intervening 25 years (Love and Rockets and Murphy's solo work. This makes it varied and interested, though not quite as extreme and experimental as some of their earlier more far-out stuff.
Let's face it: many of their earlier albums were quite good, but they also were spotty; bits of brilliance with a real clunker or flawed experiment of two between the good bits. "Go Away White" is much more consistent from beginning to end, perhaps reflecting the maturity of the players (though they still seem unable to get along for long periods of time, as evidenced by their re-break-up).
So similarities to "old" Bauhaus: Murphy's co0mmanding and melodramatic vocals, Ash's extremely textured guitar work, and the solid yet inventive rhythm section of the Haskins brothers.
In my view, Ash is a very interesting figure in that, while he can certainly play guitar "straight" and with upfront punkish intensity, he more often than not chooses the more oblique approach, reducing his guitar at times to generate whirs and chimes, scrapes and shimmering scrims of noise or tone. He did this in the old days too, but continues to find ways to coax new sounds from the commonplace rock guitar and make it fit/work for the song. Listen carefully and you'll hear all this.....
David J and Kevin Haskins are as solid as always, but now also seem to play with a newfound flexibility and subtlety, slightly shifting their accents and emphasis while still locking into a groove.
Leave your expectations about the old Bauhaus behind and you'll enjoy this record on its own merits much more.....
Imperfect but grows on you. April 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
My first listen through, I was disappointed, even worried. I commented that it made me think "This sounds like just any ol' rock band with Peter Murphy on vocals." It sounds like some of the complaints are like this.
But sometimes, it takes the right moment, and on a lone country road in south Georgia, when there was a revelation of sorts. As the album played on, it crept more and more into my mind. We turned it up. By the time we got to our far away destination and final tracks played, we were dancing in our seats and I was able to proclaim, "Now, THIS is Bauhaus!"
It's not Mask - or any other of their albums - but it grew on me, and isn't the trainwreck I feared it would be. It became groovy. I'd hum licks to myself at work. Cool.
I've loved them even since the first roar of "Double Dare" was blasted at me at my friend's house in 1986. This isn't their best, but at least upholds the love. Dark, dripping bloody, batty, vampire, bleh bleh bleh!
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