REVIEW: Tones On Tail, Everything! (Beggars Banquet)
- Joe Silva
Concocted as a brief stepping stone before settling into Love and Rockets, Tones on Tail was Daniel Ash's first breath of artistic liberation after helping to establish the Goth standard during his four years with Bauhaus.
In the two short years of its existence, Ash, brother/Bauhaus drummer Kevin Haskins, and ex-Bauhaus roadie/bassist Glenn Campling flexed their wings over fields of modern psychedelia, left-field minimalistic jazz, and proto-electronica.
Collected over two discs are their first and only LP, all the B-sides, and a twisted but fun live reading of "Heartbreak Hotel." There's also a interview piece where a BBC interviewer prods a polite but squirming Ash for the details of Bauhaus' demise ("...it was unforunate that we split up when we did...").
But what the recordings of this episode reveal are that Ash probably wanted more liberty to explore beyond whatever stylistic boundaries eventually engulfed Bauhaus. And when reviewed as a whole, (the first disc) Pop is a reeling pastiche of several convictions. Opening with "Lions," a haunting, electronic piece that not much more than a few delicate pulses and Ash's voice, it's immediately followed by a funky, bass-heavy dance bit with wailing guitars ("War"). And on and on. Pop's multi-planked platform works because virtually all the tracks are carefully laid out and tres tuneful. Tracks like "Performance," which worked when played thundering loud in the clubland of the day may seem a touch cheesy now, but oddball tracks like "Slender Fungus" echoes and improves upon the experimental sensibilities of the Floyd's "Several Species Of Furry Animals Sitting In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict." The bigtime hit "Go!" is also included come disc two and the remaining singles and b-side material besides being quite worthwhile, show our Danny to be severely bent on putting a pop face on his brooding trippyness.
As a template for what came after once Campling was booted and bassist David J returned from his own post-Bauhaus excursion, Everything! makes a lot of sense and the songs are the obvious benefactor from Ash being able to call most of the aesthetic shots. What's curious though, beyond the presumed struggle for the alpha male spot in Bauhaus, is the notion that their split occurred along musical lines since Peter Murphy ran off to do equally experimental work in Dalis Car band eventually returned to work dark voodoo over his own ultra-poppy goods.
Ultimately this probably turned out to be a thorn in Murphy's hindsight; particularly since the heights of his own solo material didn't match those of the Love and Rockets camp on either the commercial or artistically-credible front.
