This summer, after a long delay, Bauhaus is scheduled to embark on their first tour in Quite a Few Years. Kate and I will catch them in Seattle. Am I excited? Well… the boys are getting pretty long in the tooth now. In my most recent memory of Peter Murphy he is wearing reading glasses, conjuring bat sounds from his phone at the end of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”; this was when he toured to celebrate the band’s 35th anniversary with three younger musicians who were perfectly fine but definitely Not Bauhaus.

Given the simmering intra-band hostility that has obtained for some decades now, there is every reason to suspect that this reunion is motivated mostly, if not entirely, by filthy lucre. So I am keeping my expectations low. But at some level it’s not even about the performance — it’s about spending time with these guys who, in one configuration or another, have been a big part of my life for almost 40 years now.

In an encouraging sign, they recently released their first new song since 2008. Though “song” might not be the right word for it. According to the band,

“Drink the New Wine” was recorded last year during lockdown with the four members sharing audio files. The track employs the Surrealists’ “Exquisite Corpse” device whereby each artist adds to the piece without seeing what the others have done. Bauhaus have used this technique in the past to great effect. The title refers to the very first Cadavre exquis’ drawing rendered by André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Prévert and Yves Tanguy which included words which when strung together made up the sentence, “Le cadavre exquis boiara le vin nouveau” (“The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine”). For the recording, the four musicians each had one minute and eight tracks at their disposal plus a shared sixty seconds plus four tracks for a composite at the end.

Is this something to rival their best work? Don’t be silly. It’s a trifle, it’s a goof, it’s a prank. But for whatever reason and for however long, it’s good to have them back.