march 3, 2000.

this is an article I wrote for the varsity today. dig it.

Poor Peter Murphy! In a time when Le Chateau sells PVC pants and Aaron Spelling has already made a popular vampire role playing game into a terrible television series (remember Kindred?), where do we file the man who put the "corpse-like androgyne" into the long-gone Bauhaus, and by extension, the whole damn goth world? Murphy is often considered the poor man's Bowie for reasons that should be painfully obvious: he's got buckets o' street cred, a killer heroin physique and a voice that cuts deep even as it attempts to caress. And, like Bowie, he's made some goofy decisions in the studio. Witness "Hit Song," where the violins swoop through your ears like effete pterodactyls. Or "Indigo Eyes," which contains enough empty gloss to keep Ginger Spice in style during a particularly arduous UNICEF press conference.

But don't put your wallets away quite yet. Despite the all-too-visible mistakes in what can charitably be called an uneven career, Peter can crank out some beauts. The Pere Ubu cover of "Final Solution" is, if you'll permit me to lapse into Deiter-speak, absolutely gorgeous in its sulky anarchy. "Cut's You Up" will be a familiar nostalgic lift for anyone not participating in the retro craze. And the majestic yawning horror of "Subways"...well, let's just say that "Subways" is just about perfect. File under P for "promising."

Besides, lunging for the skip button is good exercise.

"Peter Murphy, the emaciated, androgynous singer had once bragged about a psychic's prediction that he would die of AIDS in Paris; now he had a kid.

"As far as Luke was concerned, Murphy should be here begging to trade places with him. Sure, breeder, he'd say, unzipping his pants, suck my dick, then go buy yourself a ticket to Paris."