Luke Haines is Dead: A Collection of Auteurs, Luke Haines & Baader Meinhof A-sides, B-sides, Classics, Out-takes, Sessions and Rarities [Box set]

It couldn't have come at a better time... with the current shift in the musical climate moving more towards the kind of British indie-guitar bands that emerged in the early-to-mid 1990's. The Auteurs are still one of the best bands to emerge from that whole scene, releasing their first album New Wave around the same time as Radiohead's Pablo Honey and managing to pre-date the kind of music recorded by Blur on albums like Modern Life Is Rubbish and The Great Escape. As a work of indie-rock perfection there's really no contest between New Wave and albums like Modern Life... or Pulp's His N' Hers, both of which seem indebted to the overall style and lyrical ideology of The Auteurs, circa '93... with the first three Auteurs' albums far surpassing the work of over-rated contemporaries like Suede and the Manic Street Preachers. The songs from the New Wave era are found on disk one, and include alternative versions of classics like Bailed Out, Junk-Shop Clothes, Housebreaker, How Could I Be Wrong, Valet Parking, et al... there's also live versions of Starstruck and Home Again, as well as unreleased tracks and b-sides like Government Bookstore, Wedding Day, High Diving Horses and the brilliant Subculture (the latter also found as a Hidden Track at the very end of New Wave).

The last few tracks of disk one and the first half of disc two cover the era of The Auteurs' second album, the underrated Now I'm A Cowboy, which covers the same lyrical territory as Pulp's 1995 album Different Class, only with a more 70's "glam-rock" feel. In the past, Haines has referred to this album as being a bit derivative of New Wave and a bit too desperate for success, though for me, there's really no arguing with tracks like I'm A Rich Man's Toy, A Sister Like You, New French Girlfriend and, one of my all time favourites, Underground Movies.

As great as the tracks from Now I'm A Cowboy are, the collection takes a turn for the sinister with the next few tracks, culled from the era between 1995-1996 when Haines was in a pretty dark place (commercial failure, relationship difficulties, two-broken legs and hospitalisation), leading to an album like After Murder Park and the Back With The Killer E.P. After Murder Park is one of those underrated masterpieces that really should garner more attention from the likes of Q and the NME, with Haines, the Auteurs and Steve Albini venturing off into an evil world of suicide, alcoholism, child-murder and terrorism. The sound was a lot more abrasive, with distorted guitars replacing the acoustic strum of New Wave (and clearly demonstrating Haines' desire for constant progression) and snarled vocals dragging us through aggravated classics like Light Aircraft On Fire (the first Auteurs' song I ever head, largely because of the Chris Cunningham directed video), Tombstone, and New Brat In Town. Alongside these angular-joys there are also two lovely little songs that seem to hark-back to the sound of New Wave, with the almost Beatlesque-pop of Unsolved Child Murder - with it's Revolver-like French horns - and the pastoral title-track, with it's wilting string section and subtly menacing lyrics ("hi, hello, where have you been... god it's good to hear your voice again, do you miss your brother... darling I will always love you... lying in a shallow grave, there's a church near by and a railway... on a bed of mud and wires, Esme find out where the child is buried...") and haunting refrain... "I'll love you, until the end".

Other standouts from this era include the even-more abrasive Back With The Killer Again, Former Fan, Kenneth Anger's Bad Dream, A New Life (A New Family) and my personal favourite of the moment, Car Crash ("Tuesday... aliens landed in the desert and on Thursday, somebody got murdered..."). Disk three picks up with Haines' 1997 side-project Baader Meinhoff, featuring more songs about death, politics and 70's terrorism. The musical arrangements here are much more progressive than anything by The Auteurs, with eastern influenced strings, fuzzy guitars and tablas. We then get some alternate versions of the best songs from the final Auteurs album, How I Learned To Love The Boot Boys, which saw the sound of The Auteurs blurring with that of his other band, Black Box Recorder.

There's also some unreleased gems from the same era, like Get Wrecked At Home, Couple Dancing and How To Hate The Working Classes, which bridge the gap between the sound of New Wave and the direction Haines would take with the Christy Malry soundtrack and Oliver Twist... This disk brings the collection to a close with some songs from the orchestral Das Capital collection, with Satan Wants Me, The Mitford Sisters and Bugger Bognor, which offer further proof that Haines is perhaps the greatest British songwriter of the last fifteen years.

Disc One, following 2001's 'Das Capital Overture' takes us back to the early Auteurs-period which was modelled on the first Modern Lovers album, displaying influences such as The Go-Betweens, The Only Ones & The Smiths. I recall seeing The Auteurs support 'Drowners'-era Suede at the Windsor Old Trout & they seemed as strong- pretty much responsible for the Britpop that followed, notably 'Modern Life is Rubbish'('American Guitars' is the evidence for Albarn's bandwagoneering) & 'Suede'. I'm sure Haines feels as bad about it as we all do - the later 'Tombstone' imagining the Columbia, the rock'n'roll cliche celebrated on Oasis' 'Definitely Maybe' going up in flames. I'm sure there are songs here that probably won't make it past the new terror-legilsation from the government!

The box-set is packed with joys, including many alternate and unreleased versions of songs like 'Bailed Out', 'Starstruck' & 'Junk Shop Clothes' - the latter superior to the 'New Wave'-version and once found on a lovely free tape with a music weekly in the 1990s. The wonderful debut single 'Showgirl' is here, alongside follow-up 'How Could I Be Wrong' and the fantastic 'Lenny Valentino.' The second-disc continues with the 'Now I'm a Cowboy' material, offering up better versions of tracks like 'The Upper Classes' (predicting Pulp's big album!), single 'Chinese Bakery' & the lovely 'New French Girlfriend', as well a b-side like 'Modern History.'

Things change halfway through disc-two, 'Light Aircraft on Fire' showing the shift to the bleak 'After Murder Park' and the 'Back with the Killer Again' e.p. (all of which is included here)- the complete opposite to all the coke-inflected self-celebration of Britpop. 'Unsolved Child Murder's chorus "If I die before my parents die" is hardly "All the people - SO MANY PEOPLE!" or "You and I are going to live forever"- more 'The Lovely Bones' written by a depressed Englishman. The material with Steve Albini is great, as subtle as Albini's work with Cinerama and Nina Nastasia and the antithesis of the noise Albini is often associated with (Big Black, The Jesus Lizard, Melt Banana). Things get bleaker on the next disc...

1996 saw Haines drop The Auteurs-moniker and record a one-off concept album called 'baader meinhof' - possibly his greatest work and one of the greatest releases of that pretty sorry decade (a highlight alongside 'Lost in the Former West', 'Tilt', 'The Future', 'Rid of Me' etc...). Here we get the original 'Baader Meinhof'/'Meet Me at the Airport'-single and the rarity 'I've Been a Fool for You' as well as collectable remixes of 'There's Gonna Be An Accident' & 'Mogadishu.' There are great alternate/unreleased versions of songs like 'Future Generation', 'Johnny & the Hurricanes' & 'Essex Boot Boys' as well as joys like single 'The Rubettes' (featuring Haines' Black Box Recorder accomplices Sarah Nixey & John Moore), 'How to Hate the Working Classes' from the soundtrack to the neglected adaptation of 'Christy Malry's Own Double-Entry' & several tracks from 'Das Capital' ('Satan Wants Me', 'The Mitford Sisters'& 'Bugger Bognor').

A great box-set reminding us of one of the great songwriters - only Cathal Coughlan is as uncelebrated; bought alongside the three Black Box Recorder albums its proof that Luke Haines is a genius and you are not? Evidence that its best not to keep these things in anyway...