goth revisited
Jun. 15th, 2009 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaLately I've been listening to a lot of early goth. Some of this is music I haven't listened to in 10-20 years, but all of it was important to me during my teen years. It's interesting to revisit this stuff at this stage when it feels both new and familiar.
There's been a lot of, "Wow, I remember really digging this song, and now it just sounds like hackneyed dreck." Also, remembering that I came to that conclusion even back then. The biggest offender in this regard is Bauhaus. Some of their music had moments of brilliance but most of it sounds like some stuff they spent 5 minutes making up. No wonder they were so prolific in the 3 years they were actually together. (It's interesting that in 26 years since Bauhaus broke up -- IOW 9/10ths of his musical career -- Peter Murphy has released seven albums of nuanced, complex, often quite stunning music, but people still think of him as "the former lead singer of Bauhaus.")
Another interesting thing is seeing how all of the early goth bands had notable improvements in musical maturity and quality within a couple of years of their first album. For some it was sudden: for example, Joy Division grew noticeably from Unknown Pleasures to Closer. For other bands it was more gradual (The Cure, Killing Joke, Siouxsie and the Banshees).
The most edifying thing though has been finding an online copy of Christian Death's Ashes. It's the one good album this group released, but it's also been incredibly scarce. I haven't listened to it since the last time I had a working turntable, which means the early '90s. Particularly the song "When I Was Bed" -- I've never heard another song that has the same emotional timbre.
There's been a lot of, "Wow, I remember really digging this song, and now it just sounds like hackneyed dreck." Also, remembering that I came to that conclusion even back then. The biggest offender in this regard is Bauhaus. Some of their music had moments of brilliance but most of it sounds like some stuff they spent 5 minutes making up. No wonder they were so prolific in the 3 years they were actually together. (It's interesting that in 26 years since Bauhaus broke up -- IOW 9/10ths of his musical career -- Peter Murphy has released seven albums of nuanced, complex, often quite stunning music, but people still think of him as "the former lead singer of Bauhaus.")
Another interesting thing is seeing how all of the early goth bands had notable improvements in musical maturity and quality within a couple of years of their first album. For some it was sudden: for example, Joy Division grew noticeably from Unknown Pleasures to Closer. For other bands it was more gradual (The Cure, Killing Joke, Siouxsie and the Banshees).
The most edifying thing though has been finding an online copy of Christian Death's Ashes. It's the one good album this group released, but it's also been incredibly scarce. I haven't listened to it since the last time I had a working turntable, which means the early '90s. Particularly the song "When I Was Bed" -- I've never heard another song that has the same emotional timbre.
