On Bauhaus and beyond, Murphy puts things in Retrospective

June 30, 2008|Linda Laban, Globe Correspondent

"Why are you so sexy?" asked a girl in the audience at the Roxy on Saturday night. "Because I like myself," replied Peter Murphy with a shrug. The chisel-cheekboned English singer then humorously pointed out the fact that he wasn't quite as sexy as he once was: "I'm old," he cried with mock horror as he pointed out his balding head. The question was part of a casual mid-set Q&A session that the 50-year-old onetime Bauhaus frontman initiated: "I need a break," he said after half an hour of energetically prancing and pogoing about the stage. Actually, the wiry Murphy seemed to relish such jovial intimacy much more than the respite it gave him from performing.

Murphy's current Retrospective tour culls from both his solo work and Bauhaus's songs, particularly those on its spring-released "Go Away White," a surprisingly fine recording after the quartet's 15-year recording hiatus. But, with Bauhaus, arguably the band who invented the Goth rock movement in 1979, once again disbanded, and this time with a sense of finality, Murphy is airing the new songs with a three-piece backing band, which includes drummer-for-hire Nick Lucero (Queens of the Stone Age). "They might've played with other people, but they're mine now," said Murphy with vampirish relish. A new solo album was completed, he also assured.

Throughout his 90-minute show, Murphy stuck unerringly to his dramatic blend of Byronesque romanticism and campy vaudeville, much of which owes a huge debt to early David Bowie. A wonderfully bright and anthemic "Gliding Like a Whale" had the diminutive Murphy summoning a big bellowing vocal. He became quite operatic on the percussive raunchy rocker "Marlene Dietrich's Favorite Poem" and issued a melodious predatory purr on "Deep Ocean, Vast Sea." The final number, an epic "Adrenaline" segued with Bowie's "Be My Wife" and a touch of T. Rex's "Telegram Sam," which Bauhaus covered in its early '80s heyday, was in itself a revealing retrospective of this child of theatrical glam rock.

Brooklyn-based singer-guitarist Ali Eskandarian opened with dynamic avant blues rock that was as touched by Hendrix and Americana as it was by eccentricity.