release date: Jun. 7, 2011
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,62]
producer: David Barron
label: Nettwerk - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Velocity Bird" - 2. "Seesaw Sway" (4 / 5) - 4. "I Spit Roses" (4,5 / 5) - 5. "Never Fall Out" (4 / 5) - 6. "Memory Go" - 11. "Crème de la crème"
8th studio album by Peter Murphy - his 'ninth' including a live album and hence the title - following full seven years after Unshattered from 2004. Since then, Murphy teamed up with the other former members of Bauhaus to reunite forces and reform the legendary band which resulted in the album Go Away White (Mar. 2008), and that only ended up by finally burying the idea of another Bauhaus era. The album here mainly features lyrics and music by Murphy and producer David Barron, while only track #5 was co-written with Murphy's former regular co-composer Paul Stratham, who most recently contributed to Cascade from '95.
Peter Murphy isn't known for releasing new studio albums once a year or even every other year, but when he finally does release an album, it's usually with a new variation of his stylistic expression as a counterbalance to his most recent album. If you have followed his career since he was the star of one of the very first and most important bands of gothic rock - a style that had sprung out of post-punk in the UK - it's nevertheless still clear that he appears stuck in his musical starting point from the Bauhaus period. At that time, the music was a new mix merging glam rock of the 70s and the so-called proto-punk - exemplified by David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Marc Bolan - with a more aggressive and simpler expression that grew out of punk rock in the shape of post-punk, where especially Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees were key style creators. Over the past three decades, Murphy has kept firmly to gothic rock as a stylistic staple with variations. His first solo album probably indicated his biggest leap in style towards an art pop arena, after which he tried a more polished pop / rock version of gothic rock, which then added variations of the early sources of inspiration, but also with a new element in his music in the form of Turkish music, which certainly has added new traits to his sound.
Ninth is a solid dark gothic rock and alt. rock album, which stands as a solid pillar for his vocal expression and temper. He has pretty much always been a stable provider in making at least one really good song on each of his solo albums over the past 27 years, since his solo debut Should the World Fail to Fall Apart (1986). And this album is one of his better. The track "I Spit Roses" is, according to Murphy himself, a song about how and why Bauhaus eventually dissolved as a band. Imho, Ninth is Murphy's third best solo album and as such a quite solid album and worth to know.
[ allmusic.com 4 / 5 stars ]
