Kick in the Eye

The riff arrives fully formed and immediate — a circular, hypnotic guitar figure that locks in like a gear clicking into place, and once it starts it barely varies, because it doesn't need to. This is Bauhaus operating in a mode that owes more to krautrock repetition than to goth atmospherics, the groove itself becoming the argument. The rhythm is lean and insistent, and Daniel Ash's guitar work here shows a different side of the band: less fog and candelabra, more coiled muscle. Peter Murphy navigates the melody with a sly, almost predatory energy, the vocal performance somewhere between a taunt and an invitation. The imagery is confrontational and slightly erotic, violence and attraction wound together the way they often are in Bauhaus's better songs — the "kick" of the title isn't entirely metaphorical, but it isn't entirely literal either. It was a significant early single for the band and captures a moment when they were still defining what they were going to be, finding the boundaries between their darker tendencies and their capacity for something almost danceable. Decades later it sounds like a reminder that goth at its best never abandoned the body — it was always as much about physical sensation as psychological unease. You put this on when you want something that moves you before it means anything.