I think it's safe to say no one would have predicted these two would have gotten together. Luke Haines, he of The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder fame, and Peter Buck, he of the chiming guitar that carried R.E.M. to greatness for at least (by any fair estimation) a half-dozen records at minimum, have joined forces for a fevered blast of a release. Beat Poetry for Survivalists, out on Friday via Omnivore Recordings here in the USA, and Cherry Red Records elsewhere, is the closest Haines has gotten to his Baader Meinhof muse in decades, and the nearest Buck's come to completely shunning his Byrdsian axe-moves for ones decidedly more glam. The release confounds in spots, but it also provides inspiration to anyone who still believes in the power of rock-and-roll to stir up some shit.
And while Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows) and Linda Pitmon are here from recent Buck project Filthy Friends, it's amazing how little this sounds like that superstar team-up, or how little it sounds like anything else in Buck's back-catalog. Still, on the witty "Witch Tarrif" one can almost hear the faint echo of the sort of riffs employed on the rockier numbers on Green (1988). At least for a few seconds. Otherwise, this is all Luke's show, with "Andy Warhol Was Not Kind" and "French Glam Man Band" sounding like bits and pieces of every Auteurs release after the first one, and the title cut, among few moments here, like parts of Baader Meinhof, that 1996 masterpiece from Haines. The album's two high-points for this long-time Haines fan were "Apocalypse Beach", a witty imagining of a dystopian future with only Donovan records on hand, and "Ugly Dude Blues", a rollicking self-aware ramble that sees Haines slyly assess the rocker's place in the 21st century. It is spry and smart, and, like his best numbers of the past, utterly unlike anything else from the Britpop generation Luke escaped and lived to write about.
Beat Poetry for Survivalists will likely seem foreign to anyone who's a Peter Buck fan and who barely knows The Auteurs, for instance, but there's enough of a dirty hook or two within these cuts, like on the title one and the percolating "Jack Parsons" opener to put a newbie in familiar, vaguely Nuggets-inspired territory. In that sense, the album hits at the touchstones that likely inspired both of these men, in separate generations, on separate continents. One will get this album, as they say, even if you're coming in virgin without a whole catalog of Haines releases in your bedsit, you know? What's fascinating about this whole project, and what renews my admiration for the talents of Luke Haines, is how much this sounds like one of his records, and how little it sounds like a Buck one. While I never expected the guy from The Auteurs to sing something like "Gardening at Night", I certainly never expected Peter Buck to lend his power to material this...surly and snide. In that sense, Beat Poetry for Survivalists works as a cool idea brought to life, and even more as a continuation (a fairly successful one too) of ideas Haines has pursued over and over for the last few decades.
Beat Poetry for Survivalists is out on Friday via Omnivore Recordings here in America, and Cherry Red Records overseas.
More details on Luke Haines via his semi-official Facebook page. More details on Peter Buck via REMHQ.com, I suppose.
[Photo: Omnivore Recordings]