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Underground > Radio & Music >

Luke Haines Hates You

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Regrettable Juvenilia

10:41 / 23.08.05

I've been listening to Luke Haines Is Dead, the recent collection of... well, a whole bunch of stuff: b-sides, rarities, alternate versions, session tracks, singles and just whichever songs Haines presumably decided should be on a 3-disc retrospective of his career (Black Box Recorder aside).

The opening 'Das Capital Overture' is an orchestral montage of bits of various Haines numbers - it basically treats these songs as if Haines really was seen as a national treasure, and this was a grand celebration of his oeuvre... And why not? Certainly these three CDs do little to dispel the recently popular rumour that he might be the greatest English songwriter of the past fifteen years.

Highlights for me so far, apart from all the obvious classics ('The Rubettes'! "sugar BABY love...") are 'Subculture' (hitherto only known to me as a nameless hidden track on the end of New Wave); 'Back With The Killer Again', which I'd not heard before; 'ESP Kids' (the missing link between Baader-Meinhof and How I Learned To Love The Bootboys, and planned for an aborted concept album about feral telepathic children roaming a post-apocalyptic England); b-side 'Breaking Up Is Hard To Do'; the final three songs (from Das Capital, which I might have to get now)... Well, I could go on.

"And of course I love the old songs
From New Wave to Murder Park
The next generation
Will get it from the start..."

If they'r lucky, Luke. If they're lucky.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:42 / 23.08.05

(Included BBR in the abstract, by the way, 'cos I thought we could broaden this out to be a general thread about all Haines music.)

17:31 / 23.08.05

Didn't have any idea this was even lined up for release, let alone out. How do the alternate versions and remixes hold up, Fly? Do we really need a third version of both Discomania and Oliver Twist?

Glad that BBR isn't represented, to be honest. That stuff's already aged quite badly, I think. Well, albums one and two - didn't bother with the third. The purposefully cold, detached vocal style makes them songs which I never feel any need to go back to.

Just been reading the user reviews on Amazon. One mentions Cathal Coughlan alongside Haines - a worthy comparison, I think, and something that I'd never considered before. A similar way with a wicked turn of phrase, a similar sort of barely-contained disgust and rage. I've said it before, but you really should check out some Fatima Mansions stuff - think you'd enjoy.

20:19 / 23.08.05

Just chirping in to say that CC is the way to go. See you in Cork at the Fr. Matthew Hall. Or not, but Coughlan is a genius either way.

J...

23:13 / 23.08.05

I've been toying with getting the new album since I saw him the other week at Summer Sundae. It was a slightly bizarre event, being in a tent full of old/young fans, parents and kids. A baby even started crying during one of the songs (possibly the one about about "unpopular 70's sex-offender Johnathan King") and he asked if it was "OK with all this"...

I really enjoyed the gig, and I was pleased to hear old Auteurs favourites (Showgirl, Lenny Valentino) - which still sounded fresh - seeing as I haven't really kept up with his output since the mid/late 90's. He also tacked on the BBR "life is unfair, kill yourself or get over it" refrain to New French Girlfriend and that was pretty great. So, I should definitely give him my money then, Flyboy...?

09:56 / 24.08.05

I think Luke Haines is great, and hugely underrated really. I saw him perform the entire Bader Meinhof record at St Lukes church in east London a couple of years back. I hear he now sports a handlebar moustache.

"More hate mail through the door, I didn't know that sunday's could be useful after all"

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:09 / 24.08.05

I saw him on Hampstead Heath with his wife and child at the weekend: he now has a full-on beard. He has fallen to the beard.

10:56 / 24.08.05

I don't know. I like the music (and would recommend the 3 disc comp, incidentally,) but I can't help feeling there's something a bit off-putting (as well as oddly dated,) about his whole 'curmudgeonliest bugger in England' routine. By my calculations, he's been affecting the manner of a kind of boho Victor Meldrew, with added homicidal tendencies, since he was about 27, (To call a band Baader Meinhof, for example, as well as being a bit silly, is exactly the kind of thing Haines would have hit the roof about if anyone else had tried it,) and I'm really not sure how many favours that's done him over the years. Pretty clearly, there's always been a miserabilist tendency in British music (Mark Smith, Morrissey, etc, etc,) but Luke Haines has taken it so far in his lyrics, interviews and presumably his life (though I hope not for his sake,) that it's often difficult to see how such a uniquely joyless individual ever gets out of bed in the morning, never mind maintains what's thus far been a reasonably prolific pop career. He can't help the way god made him obviously, and I'm not trying to say he should have smiled a bit more in the photos,* but I'm pretty sure he'd have sold a few more records if he'd just cracked the odd joke, or, God forbid, allowed 'the light' in occasionally. Even though it would have burned him, I'm sure.

He lives around here, oddly enough, so I see him in the street ever now and again, and while I can't say I've ever been tempted to approach him exactly (I really, really haven't,) I always find myself wondering if he's, y'know, doing ok. If he's all right for money, and that kind of thing. Which considering that I don't have a fairly consistently excellent three disc career retrospective out at the moment seems a bit strange, to say the least.

* Although it wouldn't have hurt either

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:10 / 24.08.05

I think you're right to an extent, and I've kind of represented the music in an over-simplified way in my first post: certainly all The Auteurs albums and the Baader-Meinfoh album range much more widely, in terms of subject matter and tone, than Haines' persona might lead you to expect. That's why I think The Oliver Twist Manifesto (one of two, near-simultaneous solo albums - well-timed as ever!) is his weakest work - not only is the vast majority of it just grumbling, it's grumbling about some very familiar miserable-old-man topics (Brit Art, ffs!). Even that has 'Never Work', though, which is on Luke Haines Is Dead.

At his best, he's always inserted moments of weirdly affecting emotion into even the "conceptual, and always a nasty concept" stuff - cf the title track from After Murder Park, where we suddenly get:

"Hi hello, what have you been?
God it's good to hear your voice again
Did you miss your brother?
Darlin' I will always love ya"

The friend who introduced me to The Auteurs used to say that bit always choked him up, and I get that. And there's plenty more like it, scattered all over the place...

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:27 / 24.08.05

I think there's a lot of emotion around the edges of Luke Haines' stuff - and personally I'd put a shout in for Black Box Recorder, which I think has some great moments, often as a result of the limitations, or if you prefer the very specific talents, of Sarah Nixey as a vocalist. The above in "Unsolved Chld Murder" is an example, as is thhe moment in "I Ran All the Way Home" where Nixey sings:

I know that you love me,
You're taking care of me.

There's also a sense of humour to BBR that I think leavens the unremitting Haines misanthropy. Songs like "French Rock'n'Roll", "The School Song" and "Andrew Ridgeley" aren't exactly Bombalurina, but they are at least a bit wry...

19:03 / 24.08.05

I've never been too sure that the unremitting misanthropy isn't just a bit of a pisstake, though. Is it not?

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:42 / 24.08.05

Well it is, but that's a bit like the humour issue with Morrisey and Nick Cave, in a way - yes, there is a lot of humour and piss-taking in there, and if people don't get that then it needs to be pointed out, but it doesn't really change the kinds of worldview that those artists express in their songs... In other words, in Luke Haines songs the world and people in general are generally put forward as worthless and despicable: the fact that he does this in a funny way doesn't change the strength of feeling, really.

15:46 / 25.08.05

I suppose what I'm trying to say is, how do we know that most of Oliver Twist isn't just an extension of that pisstaking - Haines doing self-parody. I just can't see how the level of grump and self-mythologising on that one could be even slightly serious. Unless maybe I'm trying too hard to justify it.

Haus of Mystery

11:07 / 26.08.05

I love 'After Murder Park' - a bitter riposte to the brit-pop era, full of songs about child murder, child brides and air-crashes. Haines was apparently wheelchair bound for a good deal of it's recording, and his snarling delivery makes it sound like he wasn't too happy about it. 'Unsolved Child Murder' is a fantastic song - chilling, prophetic and quintessentially British.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:12 / 26.08.05

He was - allowing for the distortions of media etc - apparently wheelchair-bound because he'd broken both his ankles jumping off a wall.

On purpose.

To get out of going on tour.

Haus of Mystery

11:22 / 26.08.05

He was probably trying to kick a child.

Haus of Mystery

11:25 / 26.08.05

Oh yeah: what's ..Boot boys like? I wasn't aware there even was a fourth Auteurs album. Came after 'Baader Meinhoff' yeah?

11:52 / 26.08.05

In the liner notes of "Das Capital" (which was the last retrospective glance at Haine's back catalogue, re-recorded with strings) he debunks the breaking his own ankles to get out of touring myth - claiming that he fell down the stairs drunk on lots of red wine.

'...Bootboys' is a great record. I don't actually have 'New Wave' or 'Now I'm a Cowboy' - are they good?

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:15 / 26.08.05

Yes! I actually think what happens as The Auteurs go on is that Haines' top form gets better and better, while the albums as a whole get patchier. New Wave all seems very one-note and oddly basic, but it doesn't waver, y'know? You have to use the skip button more and more often with each of the albums, but if you made a compilation of the best stuff from each, he'd appear to improve dramatically over time. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

How I Learned To Love The Bootboys has 'The Rubettes', 'School', 'The South Will Rise Again', 'Lights Out' and 'Future Generation', and is probably worth buying for them alone. And maybe the weird glam-rock thrash of 'Your Gang, Our Gang', though it's hardly a classic... And the very strange 'Johnny & The Hurricanes', which is a mes but a fascinating one.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:27 / 26.08.05

Now I'm A Cowboy is fantastic though - for a long time my favourite. Hard to say now as it's so familiar to me - you can borrow my copy if you like, Gypsy.

12:41 / 26.08.05

Weird aside, I know it's probably supposed to alude to a kind of Richard Allen 'Motorcycle Boys' scenario, but whenever I hear "Johnny and the Hurricanes" I always imagine this really bizarre 'King of the Rocket Men' 1930s TV show or comic as devised within the misanthropic imagination of Luke Haines. Think about it. Brrrr...

Haus of Mystery

12:55 / 26.08.05

I remember a brilliant bit in 'Select' magazine years ago, where artists would guest review the singles. The one in question involved various photos of a be-crutched Haines variously chewing, breaking and frying all the singles alongside appropriately bilious responses.

I seem to remember the final song on 'AMP' being quite beautiful.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:06 / 26.08.05

Yeah, that's the bit I quoted above - 'After Murder Park', the one that starts "Esme, would you shut the door, and put the oil lamp on the floor..."

15:55 / 26.08.05

That's the kind of thing I was on about above, McG. I remember the article (Haines, looking terrible, put the second Stone Roses album on his grill or something as I recall - fair enough arguably, but you wouldn't catch Nick Cave doing that, even Jarvis Cocker, in ultra media whore mode, might have turned his nose up at that sort of photo opp, so...) In the sleevenotes to Luke Haines Is Dead, Paul Morley refers to 'some mistakes' that Luke Haines has made career-wise. I'm guessing that allowing himself to be portrayed in the medya as not all that dissimilar to the childcatcher in Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang would be one of those errors.

And it is a shame, because, as said upthread, a lot of the time the actual records are great, easily comparable to The Kinks etc - over the years Luke Haines has not so much taken the piss, I fear, as just pissed on his chips*

*I will get my coat.

09:56 / 21.10.05

Further thoughts on this, in particular to do with the 'why isn't Luke Haines more famous' question (seeing as I seem to have inadvertently killed the thread off with that last post...)

I sort of wonder if The Auteurs just didn't emerge at the wrong end of Britpop, if they weren't *genuinely*, for once, a band that was a few years ahead of their time. Personally anyway, a lot of what seemed a bit off-putting in the early Nineties (recycled Kinks and Dylan riffs, the persona, still, I think, his biggest problem, and the lyrics about celebrity burn-out, child murder, trust funds, ex-New Age hippies and their shattered illusions, and a particulary jaded, but as it turned out pretty much accurate view of how the decade was going to end,) would have made much more sense if it had arrived fresh in the world in about 1997.

Still, bad luck, failure, these are hardly unfamiliar concerns - I'm still listening to the compilation on a pretty much daily basis, in my autumn years, and hopefully the next generation will understand, damn their hides.

16:26 / 24.11.05

The Auteurs lack of fame might have had in part to do with Luke's own pronouncements of their unimportance ("It could be me and a dog on a stick for all that the others matter"). Alex - it's very sweet of you to want to enquire re: his wellbeing, but I'm sure you'd get a fairly sarky reply in the unlikely event you were foolish enough to dare...

I think he's a really fascinating person though - certainly one of the most freethinking songwriters around today, and arguably the bmost musical too. I always imagine him snarling at people, so i was quite taken aback to hear him being pleasant to his audience on the LHID live tracks.

It was a treat to hear some of the rare B-sides. I found 'Kenneth Anger's Bad Dream' oddly touching. And like Haus, I found the peripheral emotion in songs like 'I ran all the way home' very compelling, also 'french rock 'n roll'. I can see the attraction of several of the songs on AMP but frankly, I find it too downbeat to listen to in one go - find the same thing with 'England Made Me'.

15:19 / 09.12.05

I quite like the whole Oliver Twist analogy - rising up and refusing to accept being fed rubbish.

What do you make of Haines' politics? He brings up the topic of British fascism constantly in his work - it's as if he's on a mission to remind people that it could happen here...

19:13 / 06.11.06

I was in two minds about it, but I got the new solo album 'Off My Rocker At The Art School Bop' at the weekend, and after some initial reservations I have to say it's pretty good. Setting lyrics about Enoch Powell, Gary Glitter ('Gary Glitter/He's a bad, bad man/Sullying the reputation/Of the Glitter Band') and what a festering sewer Britain in the Seventies was in general to a sort of Kinks and Glam rock influenced soundtrack, he's not charting any particularly new territory here, but then again, and as he'd no doubt point out himself, why the hell should he?

Fave tracks so far; 'Leeds United' ('When I get home my wife will kill me'), the above-mentioned 'Bad Reputation' and 'All The English Devils.' I'm fairly sure fans won't be disappointed, and if they are, well he thinks we're all scum in any case, I suppose.

Regrettable Juvenilia

23:26 / 19.11.06

Yes, I think this is the first proper Luke Haines solo album (not counting Das Capital) that's actually really good: I was a bit put off at first by the title of this album, since it suggested that maybe he was still going to be singing mostly about the British contemporary art scene, which was one of the least satisfying choices of subject matter for him to mine back on The Oliver Twist Manifesto. But fortunately a) only the title track is at all about that kind of art, and b) that song is really good, too (with the handclaps and robotic vocals near the end, it's almost a pastiche of, well, y'know, that modern arty pop the kids are into...).

21:11 / 01.06.07

I wonder if there's enought board interest to discuss some of LH's more unusual songs? I listened to 'swinging' again today, and found it to be as beautiful and disturbing as the first time I heard it. I also really like songs like 'the mitford sisters' and 'ESP kids'.

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:01 / 06.06.07

I always liked 'Swinging' - at the time I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I'd got into Haines' work in the period prior to Black Box Recorder's first album, and so as much as I liked that band in general, what I really wanted was more of him singing his own songs, so that little vocal part with him and Moore intoning "we're swinging" was really satisfying. But I think I also liked it and still do because - and maybe this is what you mean by his more unusual songs - it has that sort of hard-to-define emotional allusiveness that crops up now and again in his work. An example of this is during 'Fighting In The City Tonight' on the last album, when in the middle of a typical sarcastic "I hate the common man and I also hate all the people who hate the common man" number, he suddenly and apparently very sincerely comes out with:

"I am so in love with you
I'll never fall in love again!
I'm a lover, not a fighter
Our love I will defend!"

08:39 / 06.06.07

I love 'Swinging'. That whole album was a very important one for me (though at a much later time than around its release). I played it again and again and again... I don't know whether I'd be able to discuss why this was but I can have a go. Better go and find it.

17:21 / 06.06.07

And how, Kit... Flyboy, I should have attempted some definition of "unusual"... Maybe songs where the moral (and even the theme) is particularly obscured... Yet beneath all the cynicism, there's like you say about "fighting in the city", a genuine expression of solidarity and caring.

Latest album? I though BBR only did three... did LH do another one after 'LHID'?

12:05 / 14.06.07

Wow,
I've always been a big Auteurs fan, glad to "find the others" (hey! I'm french) but here's a question:

Didn't our beloved Luke Haines try a little too hard to reach for the acknowledged cult status?

(Ooooh how polemical!)

14:29 / 14.06.07

How did he reach?

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