Track Listing

1. Show Girl
2. Bailed Out
3. American Guitars
4. Junk Shop Clothes
5. Don't Trust the Stars
6. Starstruck
7. How Could I Be Wrong
8. Housebreaker
9. Valet Parking
10. Idiot Brother
11. Early Years
12. Home Again

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21410 in Music
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import

Amazon.co.uk Review
The title, Auteurs' auteur Luke Haines would later explain, was "a crap joke", as was his decision to pose for the cover photograph got up as a 1950s matinée idol playing Lawrence Of Arabia. These were hardly the last signifiers of Haines' somewhat obtuse sense of humour, and New Wave was only the first of several unnervingly great and wilfully diverse albums by The Auteurs. It was heavily in hock to The Kinks and The Go-Betweens but had enough going for it on its own merits that it is rightly regarded as one of the best British debuts of the decade. Much of New Wave is consumed with fame; specifically, with Haines' fascination with and horror of those who have attained it. Songs like "Don't Trust The Stars", "Starstruck" and "Valet Parking" pick at the subject with the same morbid wonder as small children with scabs. Though Haines doesn't reach any firm conclusions--the last line of the album is "A test you took ... awaiting results"--he makes an unarguable case for himself as a striking new talent, and a genuine successor to Ray Davies and Mark E. Smith in the canon of great cantankerous British pop mavericks. --Andrew Mueller

Customer Reviews

Starry
Wonderful, inexhaustibly brilliant collection of melodies, lyrics, vocal performances and guitar hooks. And listen out for the cellos too. The Auteurs' second greatest moment (you'll need to stray into Murder Park for the first).

The Less Than Glamorous Life
Overshadowed on its release by the UK music press's fascination with Suede and their inferior eponymous debut, this is a quality debut by Luke Haines and gang. Show Girl is one of the finest opening cuts on any album. Obvious influences include Marc Bolan and David Bowie and along with Suede and Blur they heralded the onslaught of Britpop.

There are some excellent orchestra backed versions of Show Girl, How Could I be Wrong, Starstuck and Junk Shop Clothes available on 'Das Capital: The Songwriting Genius of Luke Haines and The Auteurs'.

Welcome to Haines' World
It's odd how this album has become quite forgotten, failing to enter the lexicon the way much more mediocre records tagged "Britpop" do. It's amusing to think that the misguided judge on the Mercury Panel who voted for 'Suede' over 'New Wave' set Luke Haines on another trajectory. One that was even more interesting and encompassed Oliver Twist, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the English Motorway System, Leeds United, Unsolved Child Murders, The Rubettes, The English Travelling Wilburys, Patty Hearst & a Pop Strike. That is a different story, while I'm of the opinion that Haines and accomplices/employees got greater, 'New Wave' remains a great record. Five stars, obviously...

1992's debut single 'Showgirl' got critics very excited, an indie hit that was almost a hit single and one that had fans including the Pet Shop Boys when people cared. I first saw The Auteurs support a 'Drowners'-era Suede, and they kind of blew them away, despite the hype. Of course, Haines' didn't slap his backside with a mic and wasn't so obviously in hock to 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars.' There were influences, but ones a little culty and worked well into the Auteurs' own sound - Haines' mentioned the Modern Lovers' debut as the model for 'New Wave' - the "health shop" reference in 'Showgirl' probably could have come from a song like 'She Cracked' ("I stay at home/eat health food at home", I think!). Like Suede, there was a general glam air - I'd say T Rex over Bowie - though it's a bit more subtle than Suede and Denim, the pair of bands who probably were the 'Glam Racket' Mark E Smith sang of during his 'Infotainment Scan.' There's more than a hint of the mighty Go-Betweens, literary lyrics, far too clever, like a bedsit Dylan lost in a certain England. Haines' has cited The Only Ones, and that is more than fair when considering Haines' guitar on songs like 'Don't Trust the Stars', 'How Could I Be Wrong?' & 'Early Years.' In a more general sense, Haines' is tapping into an English tradition of lyric that was a bit forgotten at the time - we'd had indie-dance, ambient, grunge, variants of rave, shoegazing, and were just a sniff away from stadium house - so you could think of the neglected part of Ray Davies' career (late 60s-early 70s), Mark E Smith, Elvis Costello, and the caustic side of Kevin Rowland. There are reminders of the early work of The Smiths, though not in that dreary way bands like Gene and Raymonde sounded like them; on the other hand, 'New Wave' predicts the few decent Morrissey albums of the 1990s in sound and lyric: 'Your Arsenal' and 'Vauxhall and I.' & I'd go on the record and say that a certain kind of England Haines' is singing about predicted the horror that was The Libertines - play this against either of their records and see how overrated Docherty & co are. The Go-Betweens/certain period of Orange Juice elements predict the band we know as Belle and Sebastian - take a look at the lyrics to 'Showgirl' or 'Junk Shop Clothes' and you'll pretty much find B&S' career, albeit better and several years earlier...

'New Wave' always sounds good this time of year, it's amazing just how loaded with joys this debut album is - 'Bailed Out', 'Idiot Brother', 'Starstruck', 'Housebreaker', 'How Could I Be Wrong', 'Junk Shop Clothes'...why does it feel a bit forgotten? Was it too clever? I certainly recall people having that mild aversion to The Auteurs that some had with Morrissey/The Smiths and Belle and Sebastian - though I guess 'After Murder Park' and 'baader meinhof' put paid to that, the u-ziq remix thing too. It's possibly Haines' least caustic album, despite the fact it includes lines like "I want to kill your sister with some business advice" and pretty much all of 'American Guitars', a sneering at a certain band/scene.

'New Wave' is a pretty darn great debut, though I'm of the opinion that neglected follow-up 'Now I'm a Cowboy' is probably a better record in similar climes - especially 'The Upper Classes.' With 'New Wave', Haines and The Auteurs pretty much set out the landscape - I know 'Modern Life is Rubbish' and 'Suede' popped up around the same time, so why is it that Haines feels like a pioneer? Amusingly, Haines would reject the Britpop thing and record an album with Steve Albini - embracing alternative-America a few years before Damon Albarn decided that was where it was at! I would like to point out that the first disc of the three-cd set 'Luke Haines is Dead' has lots of lovely related material - 'She Might Take a Train', 'Government Bookstore', 'Subculture' and lots of alternative live/session versions. Some of which are better than those here, notably the BBC session take on 'Junk Shop Clothes', the single mix of 'How Could I Be Wrong' & the unreleased single mix of 'Bailed Out.' So, maybe that wonderful compilation should be investigated too?

'New Wave' remains an assured debut from one of the great English songwriters, though I would like to point out my favourite songs to emanate from Haines & co don't include any of the songs here!: The Spook Manifesto, Child Brides, Mogadishu, The Facts of Life, Leeds United, Christ, Unsolved Child Murder, Kill Ramirez, The Upper Classes, What Happens When We Die & Future Generation. As D:REAM and Tony Blair would predict in the 1990s: Things can only get better...