Baader Meinhof

It could be seen as being in bad taste (a few journos plumped for a 'National Front Disco'/'Satanic Verses' style reaction)- then again, the world of rockandroll has always been happy to nod to the nazis (Siouxsie Sioux, Keith Moon, Throbbing Gristle- I'm not saying whether they were right or wrong) and The Clash nodded to the Red Army Faction (R.A.F.), while Julian Cope wrote some songs during The Teardrop Explodes called 'Stannheim' & 'Like Leila Khaled Said.' Haines isn't celebrating the RAF/Baader-Meinhof - but attempts to write an album, which is kind of pop and certainly leads to what he did with Black Box Recorder, that isn't a bunch of love-songs. The 1970s seemed to be a preoccupation, and returned on The Auteurs' album 'How I Learned to Love the Bootboys' (e.g. 'Future Generation', 'The Rubettes' a few years later. Haines approach to the BM-story is more like a cut-up/novel approach- we're not sure whose POV the song is from and there are several tracks I couldn't really tell you much about...

The The's Matt Johnson nodded ironically to The Sweet's 'Ballroom Blitz' on 1989's 'Armageddon Days (are here again)'- Haines does something similar with the backwards-guitar-loop of 'There's Gonna Be An Accident' which sounds like Stevie Wonder's 'Superstition' (while a bassline on 'Theme from "Burn Warehouse Burn" sounds like the theme to TV's homoerotic cop-classic 'The Professionals'). The standout-track for me remains 'Mogadishu', which not only may or may not refer to a training-exercise, but has some pertinence regarding more recent acts of terrorism. It sounds like an acid-tinged take on terrorist-training- Manson meets Marxism: "Drive me to the city-limits/God is war and love...Captain Martyr Mahmoud says it's a 24 hour flight/When the fireworks hit you/Mogadishu/On a beautiful Saturday night..."- the arrangement of strings, as well as the use of tabla, sixties-style soundtracks and a electronic-loop that recalls the intro to Japan's 'Ghosts' all come together beautifully. Haines sounds like he's singing a devotional love song with the oddest material- which is the kind of thing I like...

'GSG-29' is perhaps the meeting point of Isaac Hayes & John Barry, laying the ground for the final four-brilliant songs - '...It's a Moral Issue' having Swan-Lake-style strings, some glam-guitar & a hint of electronica- before building into some Bernard Herrmann-strings as Haines drifts into sinister-chant (Radiohead's 'Dollars & Cents' rips this off I think!). 'Back on the Farm' sounds suitably 'Ipcress File' and even nods to the rationale for the creation of terrorists such as these, "and the children be politicised/This is the Petra Schelm commando/She was my sister..." The mantra of the album is here (also quoted on the disc), "this is the hate-socialist collective- all mental-health corrected."

'Kill Ramirez' is bizarrely groovy, with the tabla-contributions, the sliding-strings & some Ronsonesque-guitar; while the album opens and closes on alternate-versions of the title track (evoking a circular-feeling). 'baader meinhof' is very much like an e.p., one that seems a bit overlooked and certainly deserves consideration alongside Haines' career-highlights 'New Wave', 'After Murder Park', 'England Made Me', 'The Facts of Life' & 'Das Kapital.' It also fuses music-styles of the era with that kind of historical subject-matter- which is interesting and tells us a lot about music-based nostalgia (Oh, I tap my foot to 'Going Underground' & smile sweetly at the thought of the Iran Hostage Crisis...) A very odd kind of pop-record, but a pop-record all the same...

Obviously, it's not for everyone, but if you like his other stuff, this is a good album and definitely the equal of the auteurs albums. LH gets more good moments in a 40 min record than most bands do in an hour's worth.