It’s been over a decade since Peter Murphy last released an album – 2014’s Lion – but the intervening years have been far from quiet. Between solo tours – both with a full band and stripped back – Murphy undertook a partial Bauhaus reunion with bassist David J to celebrate 40 years of their debut In The Flat Field. He also began a residency at Le Poisson Rouge in New York in 2019, which was cut short when Murphy suffered a heart attack. This spurred a full Bauhaus reunion, which was delayed by COVID and then truncated when Murphy left the tour to once again attend to his health. All of these experiences have fed into his new album Silver Shade.
“You can’t go through something like that and not have it reflect on your work,” says Murphy from his home in Turkey. “I would say a forced stillness – both global and personal – and the strange clarity that can come from the silence of recovery and the sense of being cut off made its way into Silver Shade. Not as a concept, but as a condition.”
Silver Shade is Murphy’s second collaboration with Killing Joke member and in-demand producer Martin ‘Youth’ Glover. “We don’t really sit down and write in the traditional sense,” says Murphy. “It’s more about creating a space where things can happen; sonically, emotionally. He’s very intuitive, which suits me. There’s no clutter in the room with him, no ego.”
Such lack of ego has opened Murphy up to the idea of duets, of which there are two on the album. ‘Swoon’ pairs Murphy with Trent Reznor – an artist he’s worked with before – but the second shared vocal raised a few expertly pencilled eyebrows. “There’s beauty in unexpected pairings,” says Murphy of the appearance of Boy George on the glam-flecked ballad ‘Let the Flowers Grow’. “George and I go way back – same circles, different expressions,” he says. “There’s always been a mutual respect there, even when we were orbiting wildly different energies.”
The idea for the duet came up when Murphy heard Youth’s demo and “felt it needed a second voice, one that could carry contrast but also tenderness. George has this vulnerability behind the bravado that really fit what the song was asking for. No drama or overthinking, just honesty and presence.”
While embracing new creative opportunities, Silver Shade also sees Murphy look back to formative ones. The singer describes ‘The Artroom Wonder’ as “An echo from my fourth year at senior school. [Bauhaus guitarist] Daniel Ash and I are listening to the mysterious sixth form cool intelligentsia that have gathered in the art room. We have dared to enter their conclave, and the music coming from it is intriguing.” Murphy and Ash discovered they were listening to David Bowie’s ‘The Bewlay Brothers’ from 1971’s Hunky Dory, which set them on the path that led to Bauhaus and beyond. Bowie is of course included in Murphy’s Baker’s Dozen, but perhaps not the album people may expect.
As an artist in his fifth decade of making music – Bauhaus’ nine-and-a-half minute experiment in creeping dread ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ was released in August 1979 – Murphy has seen the musical landscape change beyond recognition. “When I started, we were making records on tape, cutting them by hand, really,” he says, “And now it’s all zeros and ones, streaming in an instant. But the essence and intent behind it hasn’t changed for me. I’ve always followed the same thread: make something truthful, make something that carries weight, even if it’s wrapped in a bit of glamour or theatre.”
Glamour and theatre is one of the reason Bauhaus are recognised as the pioneers of gothic rock, and it’s a sobriquet that’s followed Murphy throughout his career, particularly in Europe and the UK. Yet, unlike many of his contemporaries linked to the genre, he’s comfortable with the association. “I’ve never run from the term goth, although I’ve never claimed it either,” he says. “It was a label put on us after the fact. We were just making something honest, raw, and theatrical, and if people saw darkness in it, that’s probably because we weren’t afraid to look into the shadows a bit.”
Despite its detractors, goth is the subculture that refuses to die and has recently been enjoying something of a resurgence, with OGs (original goths) such as The March Violets, The Fields Of The Nephilim, and UK Decay back on the road rubbing shoulders with new dark wave artists such as Vision Video, Heartworms, and Tristwch Y Fenywod. “The fact that young people are still finding something in it, something they can hold onto, something they can express themselves through, does give me a sense of pride,” says Murphy. “It had resonance then, and it has resonance now. I don’t walk around thinking, ‘Ah yes, we fathered a subculture,’ but when I see a new band with that same spirit – mixing the romantic and the brutal, the sacred and the profane – I see the lineage, and it makes sense.”
However it looks like Murphy’s alma mater won’t be capitalising on this resurgence. “Has the book finally closed on Bauhaus? I’d say the book’s on the shelf for now,” he says. “Whether it’s closed entirely, I don’t know. It feels like it, but I’ve learned never to speak in absolutes when it comes to Bauhaus. There was fire in the last shows we played, and a kind of finality, too. I think we all felt that. It wasn’t nostalgic; it was alive. And if that’s where it ends, then I’m content with that.”
Murphy’s mind is on promoting Silver Shade, including a UK date at the inaugural Forever Now festival in Milton Keynes in June and Germany’s M’era Luna later in the year. But right now, there’s the matter of choosing his Baker’s Dozen for tQ. “I don’t chase trends,” he says, “And I’ve never tailored what I do to fit the times. You adapt without losing yourself – that’s the key.”
Silver Shade is out now on Metropolis. He plays Forever Now on 22 June and M’era Luna on 9 August 2025.
To begin reading Peter Murphy’s Baker’s Dozen, click ‘First Selection’ below
