Britain s pop scene had better beware: The Auteurs are back. The irrepressible and often acerbic Luke Haines has returned with his fourth album, the unadulterated pop of How I Learned To Love The Bootboys.
Exploding onto the scene in the early 90s with two albums, 1993 s New Wave and Now I m A Cowboy the following year, The Auteurs haven t been heard of since 1996 s excellent After Murder Park, when rumours of their demise abounded in the music press.
I said in the press that bands should only make three albums, which is the kind of thing I say, Haines laughs, which then got misinterpreted as The Auteurs split up . I then contacted Melody Maker and explained that that wasn t what I meant. They had the good grace to come and review our one gig in Paris and billed it as The Auteurs last show. However much I protested that we weren t splitting up, Melody Maker insisted that we were.
Haines admits that it didn t help matters that he followed After Murder Park with a number of other musical projects, namely Black Box Recorder and Baader Meinhoff, which reinforced the myth of The Auteurs dissolution. Adding to the speculation was the fact that After Murder Park, while critically lauded, seemed to be largely ignored by the public and perhaps by his record company.True?
I stand by that record, but I think it was a really hard record to sell to people, says Haines. The record company attitude was that it was a really good record but that people don t want to know about this stuff. He s referring to songs like Unsolved Child Murder and Neptune s Daughter , whose grisly subject matter was more suited perhaps to The X Files than a pop album. That said, it remains one of the finest albums of that year and still receives more than an occasional rotation on the Walshe turntable.
While it has been three years since The Auteurs last release, the delay in getting . . . Bootboys on the shelves was not a deliberate career move. It was just that Haines other projects took up so much time. The end result is different to what he has done before. Sure, it contains his usual quota of acerbic lyrics and tight melodies, but it s delivered with more of an out and out pop sensibility.
He agrees: I wanted to make a record that was accessible, musically. I had covered really dark ground on After Murder Park, Baader Meinhoff and Black Box Recorder, and I wanted to get away from that for once. It wasn t in a bid for any commerciality: it was just where my head was. I didn t want to be in this dank basement flat with the grey clouds looming all the time I had to get out of that for my own sanity.
It s really an autobiographical record, admits Haines. A lot has been made of this anti-nostalgia thing, but the record covers the whole lot, from 1967, when I was born, up to the early 80s, misses out most of the late 80s and 90s, and ends up in the present with Future Generations .
Future Generations is probably the song that has critics poring over Haines disdain for the Abba decade, as he curses, I put a pox on the 70s . I wonder if he looks back on the decade that taste forgot with any fondness whatsoever.
Yeah, I do, he laughs, but it s a really strange time, when you think about it. Only in the late 90s has it been viable to resurrect the 70s. People kept trying to do it in the 80s, even though the 80s themselves were a truly dreadful decade. I always remember David Bowie being interviewed round about the time of Ashes To Ashes, and he said this really pessimistic thing about how the 80s were going to be remembered as the dreadful 80s, and he was right. I think in the 80s, people thought the 70s were a dreadful time, but then they developed this rose-tinted memory of them as crimpolene-stacked heels the Velvet Goldmine revisionist idea where you have these androgynous boys everywhere, which wasn t the case.
I think, unwittingly, Pulp have played a part in that. I don t think they ever meant to, because I think Jarvis observations on growing up were all fairly spot on it s just that his is a northern point of view while mine is a southern one. I remember the 70s as being that time of power cuts on a Saturday night: you were allowed to stay up later to watch TV but then you couldn t cos there d be a power cut.
The same song sees Haines sarcastic streak swipe at his own career, ironically describing himself as a falling star and making reference to old Auteurs LPs.
I was being somewhat self-deprecating with that, he laughs. I was taking the piss out of that certain perception that people have of me and The Auteurs. There s a certain fan of The Auteurs who think that this is a band that no-one likes, except them, and quite a few journalists like that too, who almost get annoyed when they come to a gig and it s sold out. So I was taking the piss out of that, and also going for that ridiculous notion that THIS IS AN IMPORTANT BAND! that rock critics give bands.
Haines himself has almost always been a media darling. The Auteurs came onto the scene when everyone was heralding the end of rock music and the birth of dance as the only viable way forward, and Haines was lauded as one of the saviours of guitar pop. The fact that he was never short of an acerbic quote or two always helped matters as well. Since then, he has seen Britpop come and go, and I put it to him that now rock music is as healthy as it has been in some time and the musical climate has changed considerably.
The worst thing that has happened is that it has become careerist, he opines, regardless of the quality of bands. As soon as music starts becoming careerist, it s effectively dead. Every kind of horrible alt-rock band is a career rock band now, queuing up for their corporate pensions. I imagine that instead of seeing a careers officer at school, people are now seeing their first press officer.
Britpop is gone, thank God, because it was an awful diluted idea anyway. People seem to have forgotten that when Blur became a Britpop band, we d already done that and they took their references directly from Suede and The Auteurs: fact. They always have done they made their lo-fi album, and Graham Cox started worshipping Steve Albini after I d already done Murder Park with him. He pauses, and laughs, I don t know what the point of this is, other than I m starting to rant about Blur, which I m really enjoying, he laughs. But I think music is in a dreadful state at the moment, I conclude.
Haines has gained quite a reputation as a caustic commentator. How does it sit with him that he is viewed as a sneering cynic on a mission?
He laughs uproariously: I have good days and bad days. You always get tarred with some kind of brush and sometimes I don t mind that. I ve always had a big attitude problem and I have a basic psychological flaw that I m an awkward sod and I always have been. That s my personality and I can t do anything about it. I do say things and get myself into trouble: I can be incredibly bitchy when I want, but I m a good bitch. There s nothing worse than being a bad bitch.
While Haines describes the chances of an Irish show as possible , it is probably unlikely. We very seldom take The Auteurs out of England, he confesses, which is kind of a nice thing. It s almost like that Woody Allen thing of never leaving Manhattan.
But what if . . . Bootboys is the album to propel Haines to mega stardom? Is it something he would embrace? Does he want fame?
I think I did round about the time of the second album, he admits. I think I was quite keen on being famous. But I d rather be famous for something else than for being a pop star. I do think that pop stars are scum, and I think they re beneath me, really. I just think they re vermin. I ve never met one who was any good, frankly: they re just arseholes who are up themselves most of the time. So I d quite like success but maybe in some other form.
So what would he like to be famous for?
I was thinking of moving into TV, actually, in some capacity, he says. I wouldn t mind doing that sometime in the next year. n
How I Learned To Love The Bootboys is out now on Hut Records.