Peter Buck on Luke Haines, Shiny Happy People, the Supreme Being and more
Plus Paul St. Hilaire, Rufige Kru, Verses GT and more
Line Noise might veer towards the electronic side of sounds. But I love pretty much all kinds of music, with the notable exception of bagpipes, so when I was offered interviews with Luke Haines and Peter Buck for Radio Primavera Sound I jumped at the opportunity.
I’ve got history with them both. I first saw The Auteurs - Haines’ old band - live on October 12 1992, when they played the Norwich Waterfront in support of Suede. Suede were, at that point, the hottest thing in British music and The Auteurs had been hand picked as their support band. But whereas Suede were glamorous and sexy, The Auteurs were dark and inventive, kind of elegant but definitely seedy, bedsit Britain at its best. I immediately fell in love.
You can watch my interview with Luke here.
I first got into REM - Peter Buck’s old band, which you almost certainly don’t need me to remind you - about a year earlier. I don’t exactly remember when, but it was probably sometime in February 1991, when Losing My Religion was released. Out of Time, their seventh studio album, came out the following month and at some point after that my sister bought a copy that I used to periodically steal.
But it was Shiny Happy People, released as a single in May 1991, that really did it for me. I loved that song at 13 and I continue to love it today. It’s definitely in my top five REM songs and I was delighted that Peter brought it up in our interview. They used to play it at the Norwich Waterfront indie disco night I used to attend throughout the early 90s and it always brought joy.
The reason for the interview is the release of Going Down to The River… To Blow My Mind, the third album from Haines and Buck and an absolute gem, where Haines’ absurd humour and sharp songwriting eye meets Buck’s masterful guitar playing. (And lots of love to Scott McCaughey, Linda Pitmon and Morgan Fisher, who also contribute.) It is, as I mentioned in the interview with Peter, a bit like The Auteurs meets Monster-era REM, which is a fantastic combination.
You can hear my interview with Peter here. But I know a lot of people prefer to read interviews, so here it is. We talk about Shiny Happy People, Lieutenant Pigeon, the Supreme Being and so much more. Enjoy.
Ben Cardew: You first got to know Luke Haines when you bought a painting of his - but were you aware of his music before that?
Peter Buck: Oh, yeah. I had an advanced cassette of the first Auteurs album, which I loved. I had all his records. I knew who he was and I just got on some website, I bought a painting and that was the initial meeting.
BC: What did you like about The Auteurs?
PB: Great songwriting, kind of traditional. It reminded me a bit of Ray Davies from The Kinks. And then the records got increasingly weirder after that. I was a big fan of the Baader Meinhof record and I just kept up with him over the years.
BC: For me, his music is very English and your music I always think of as being quite American. Is that fair?
PB: Influences can come from everywhere but I guess people think we do sound American. But, you know, I grew up listening to the whole English invasion thing. And, of course, living all over America, I heard every type of American music. It is kind of funny when this English guy and this American guy get together and the last record [All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out] was basically a Krautrock punk record. So I don't know how that happens.
BC: Luke was telling me that the only thing you really dislike that he plays is Lieutenant Pigeon.
PB: I still don't believe that there's some kind of weird national joke that the English do to send out, just like… [Laughs] ‘What is this, Luke? Just explain to me this?’ And he couldn't give me a real explanation.
BC I don't think there is one, but he loves them, certainly.
PB: From what I heard, it was quintessentially a type of English music, I guess descended from Music Hall that we don't really have over here. So for me, it's just kind of confusing.
BC: Do you have one artist that you love that he dislikes?
PB: We usually talk about music we do like. And we're both pretty voracious as far as following things. I think I listen to more Brazilian and African music than he does, but I don't think that he would say that he would dislike that.
BC: How do you think your music, your creativity, fits together?
PB: I think that we both have respect for songwriting traditions. As far out as our songs get, they actually have verses and choruses and bridges and things like that. You might not be able to tell what the hell is going on, because they're so chaotic and some of them are quite noisy. But we're songwriters. We sat down and learned how to write songs from teenagers and something sticks with you.
BC: Luke said one of the things that unites you is that you're both always writing songs.
PB: Yeah, I know that he does and I do. I've already sent him a few little pieces of things for the next record and I've got three or four records coming up this year. It's what you do. It's what I do. I don't know how to do anything else. I mean, I do it around the house. It's not even like work. It's just, you know, it's what I do.
BC: Have you ever had a big writer's block?
PB: I think writer's block might be the wrong word for it. There are times when you write a lot and there are times when you don't feel very inspired. But even in the inspired times, I write things but you kind of listen to it and think, ‘Yeah, that's just not very good.’ Occasionally, I'll play one of my not very good ones to someone and they’ll think it's good.
So sometimes you lose your confidence, your ability. But the secret is, if you think you're just turning out garbage, just keep turning it out until you get through that patch. If you write 20 songs, you don't like any of them, we'll just go ahead and write the 21st and eventually you'll get re-inspired or something. But, yeah, I don't go long periods without writing.
BC: I think it's interesting how artists are judges of their work. Because there are quite a lot of times when songwriters write a song, they think it's trash, and then that becomes the biggest hit they've ever done, the global hit. Do you think you're a good judge of your work?
PB: I certainly have a feeling for what succeeded and what failed and what is less important, record by record by record. But if you look at Spotify, Shiny Happy People is I think our [REM’s] second most popular song. We knocked that out in an afternoon. I thought it was kind of funny and stupid and it was going to be on the record. It wasn't anything I thought people would think about a year later. It was a track for the record. I'm not embarrassed by it or anything. I just look at it, ‘That’s what people think, then they think about REM?’
BC: I was going to mention Shiny Happy People, because it's in my top five REM songs. Luke’s daughter really likes it as well, which I quite enjoy.
PB: I hadn't thought about it in years, but gosh, probably about five or six years ago, I was in Peru. I speak just about enough Spanish to understand the DJ was saying that they were having a big 90s New Wave weekend, and I heard The Cure and The Fixx and then Shiny Happy People came on in the back of this cab. I was listening to it, ‘God this sounds great. It sounds really good. I mean, silly, but it's well thought out. It's well arranged….’
BC: One day I'm going to write something big about Shiny Happy People. But that day has not yet arrived.
PB: It's kind of like World War Two. Give it some time to look back on it.
BC: I believe Luke writes all of the song lyrics and titles, right?
PB: Yeah, I think I give him some titles for sure, but yeah. The division is Scott McCaughey [who features on bass, Moog bass, Mellotron, backing vocals] and I will sit in our various basements, or mine, where I record, and put together a track that has a drum machine, two or three guitars, keyboards, bass, maybe some extra sounds. Send it off to him. Luke gets inspired, writes the lyrics, comes up with the melody, sends it back and we add things to what he’s done. This last time around, we did that and then we went in the studio and took what we were working on and recorded it as a four piece. The two previous records have been records done through the mail.
BC: Luke was saying that with this record, although it's both of your names on it, you’re basically a band. And you were thinking, ‘Well, we could give it another name because it's a band.’ But then you thought, ‘Well, we've already got this name.’
PB: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that happens in my post-REM work is that I almost never do the same thing twice. So you never get the chance to build up a head of steam, really. And you know, it started out as Luke Haines / Peter Buck, that's fine. Let’s keep it like that.
BC: One thing I love about Luke's work, about your joint work, is that there's a really strange sense of humour in there. Do you ever ask Luke to explain what the lyrics are about? Because some of them are pretty unexpected.
PB: Yeah and quite a few are fairly English-centric. I think Jack Parsons [on Beat Poetry for Survivalists, the duo’s 2020 debut album] is that the one that had the children that were being attacked by poltergeist on some English TV show? [I think he is talking about Ghostwatch, a 1992 BBC mockumentary that caused an absolute furore.]
I had never even heard of this and I looked it up and read about it and it was really interesting, but I had no idea what that was. But a good portion of everything else, you know? I've read the English rock mags since 1971 or 2, so I kind of know what's going on, even if it's not anything that we hear over here.
BC: Before I was allowed to listen to the new album, I had to fill out a questionnaire, which is described as a ‘pre-listening psychiatric assessment survey’. Was that your idea?
PB: My guess that has the fine fingerprints of Luke Haines on it. [Laughs]. I could see him doing that. I had no idea. And I think it was a pretty great idea.
BC: Would you mind if I ask you a couple of questions from that list? This is a good one. Assuming that there is a Supreme Being, do you think the Supreme Being likes you?
PB: I believe the Supreme Being is completely indifferent to me and everyone else on this planet.
BC: Agreed. Are you a why person or a what person?
PB: Probably why.
BC: One more: Would you be willing to die tonight and then be re-conceived?
PB: Absolutely not. No chance in hell. I'm expecting and hoping that this will be the end; when the time comes I'll be ready to embrace infinity or wherever. But I don't think I want to do this twice. I did get pretty lucky this time, too.
BC: I was gonna say, I have it in my mind that being Peter Buck in 2025 is a pretty nice life, right?
PB: Oh, it's great. You know? I've been playing with bands, climbing mountains in Chile. I collaborate with people I like. If I get up at six in the morning and decide to travel somewhere, I just do it.
It is pretty great, with the caveat that everyone's life has different levels of great and good and not good. I think the secret is, if you go through life believing that you're a lucky person, then you're lucky. And so I've always believed that I'm lucky. I'm lucky if I get to do this. I was born when I was born, I'm healthy enough to make this music and I'm getting to work with people I like. It's a privilege. So I feel really lucky.
BC: I mentioned the new album Going Down to The River… To Blow My Mind. How do you think it fits in to the music you've done before? It's described as the third in the psychiatric trilogy of albums that you've made. Do you see as being quite similar to the previous two, or is it quite different?
PB: This one's a lot poppier and more rock out. I had this little picture in my mind of what I wanted to accomplish musically and then every time I would sit down to write / record, I would just go the opposite direction. So I just kept sending Luke a lot of rock songs, which wasn't what I had planned but he seemed to react to it.
The fact that we recorded it together, of course it has a much better band feel.The first two records we have Linda [Pitmon] overdub the drums to the finished tracks. Nobody likes to do that and she's great at it. But she was really happy to be in the room with us as we were playing the music. And it changes perspective of how you look at the song, while other people are playing it with you, as opposed to recording pieces of music by yourself and sending it out via the mail.
BC: It reminded me a bit, to go back to your old work, of Monster crossed with The Auteurs.
PB: I could see that a little bit. There were definitely a couple of songs on this record that I went, ‘Yeah, you know, if REM were still together, this would be one of the singles.’ Once you get to know someone as a person, writing the songs together, but then writing around in the band and playing, sitting around hotel bars or whatever, you understand a little bit closer what might appeal to them and what not. We were also just writing things and sending them off into the mail and doing 20 other things at the same time.
BC: Would it be rude of me to ask which ones you thought would be the singles?
PB: Judy Chicago. That one, I remember thinking, ‘That's just too much like a rock and roll REM song or something.’ But I sent it along [to Luke] and he finished it in four days. So clearly that wasn’t such a hindrance to him.
BC: One question, if I may, about your old band. You recently released a new remix of Radio Free Europe with the proceeds going to charity. (Proceeds from the vinyl will go to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). How did that feel, going back to a song that is from 40 something years ago?
PB: Yeah, 45… 44 Yeah. Trump shut down money to the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, radio stations that were intended to spread the American view of the world, which is kind of propaganda-ish. But on the other hand, at the time, they were spreading their view against China and Russia and the Eastern Bloc. And I would like to think it was a whole lot more truthful than the other ones. I’m pretty sure that what they'll do is get rid of all that stuff and then get Trump's Truth Social going out as the official word of the United States. So, it's just a little way of saying, ‘Hey, this is what these people are doing.’
BC: One final question, if I may: a massively loved indie band from the 1980s found big fame on an indie label. They're no longer with us, so when are the Cocteau Twins going to be reforming?
PB: Well, you have to ask them but I really love those records. I'm surprised they haven't done something but I don't know… I don't know anything about their personal lives or how they feel about each other. It's just there were these weird, cool, magical records that appeared and then they stopped. And even if you read anything about that, it doesn't really tell you anything, because they don't really want to say anything. So I don't know. I hope that they do something, I would love to have a new record.
Some listening
Where do the odd couple of Nosaj Thing and Jacques Greene meet musically? In stadium 2-step, apparently, à la Overmono, albeit with a warmer edge on Your Light, thanks to a wonderfully subdued vocal from George Riley. It feels like there is some witchery involved on Your Light, a song that is simultaneously heavy and feather-light, the production made up of titanium spider webs.
Bogdan Raczynski - order is a fig
Does Bogdan Raczynski’s new album Slow Down Stupid consist of slowed down versions of songs from his 2024 album You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever, the press release asks? Errrr I think so. But I didn’t really explore that album as I should, so I can’t be sure. But what I can say is the experience of listening to the album - including the 52-minute long, stretched-out-beyond-the-point-of-reason, closing track stupid - is a disorienting adventure, as time seems to stretch elastically and musical changes happen at the slow, deliberate pace of a crown green bowls tournament.
Is it relaxing? Not really, Raczynski’s music is too disquieting for that. But it does serve as a reminder than we all need to slow down from time to time, which can only be a good thing, while opening track, order is a fig, reminds me of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man in its malevolent stroll.
JASSS continues to follow a fascinatingly divergent career, where her DJ sets are almost entirely unrelated to her recorded music output. I saw her DJ at the recent SoundIt festival in Barcelona and it was great - throbbing, industrial techno of huge strength and agility. But it was nothing like Hollow, the second single to be taken from her new album Eager Buyers, which is a kind of gothic industrial rock, sporting a Cure-ish bass line to bring the melody, a breakbeat slowed to the pace of an afternoon nap and JASSS’s own gnarled vocal. The song brings to mind everything from Nine Inch Nails to Garbage - in the best possible way - which goes to show the pop smarts at the heart of JASSS’s work.
DJ Narciso Produções - Não Sabes
The title of DJ Narciso’s new album Capítulo Experimental translates as “Experimental Chapter”, which seems a little harsh on his previous, not-exactly unadventurous records. At the same time, Não Sabes is a fiercely odd beast wrapped up in dance-floor clothing, consisting of a couple of atonal - and yet highly catchy - noises that chase the beat around the mix like infected Pacman ghosts. I’m a total sucker for the school of weird noises as hooks - obviously - so this had me right away.
Paul St. Hilaire & Mala - Like It’s Always Been
Paul St. Hilaire (AKA Tikiman) has one of the most doleful, soulful voices in electronic music, his work with Basic Channel Moritz expanding the duo’s scuba-deep dub techno productions into actual, honest-to-god songs, without losing any of their production intensity. His 2023 album, Tikiman Vol. 1, is well worth your attention too.
The announcement of his new album, w/ The Producers (the name a spin on the classic Rhythm & Sound w/ The Artists) got me very excited, then, as it sees St. Hilaire team up with producers of the calibre of Batu, Shinichi Atobe and Mala to (hopefully) show the tedious new wave of dub techno producers what musical emotion looks like. Digital Mystikz’ Mala produced the first single, Like It’s Always Been, and it proves an enticing introduction to the album, combining a pulsating, headache bass with a shuffling rhythm that is neither dub nor dubstep, a lyrical flute line and a St. Hilaire vocal that is right out of the poetic doledrums.
Is Burial the new The Orb? Not that we really need a new The Orb, given that the good old Orb are gearing up to the release of their 18th (!?) studio album later this year. But Comafields, taken from a new Burial 12 inch, does have the slight air of classic Alex Paterson and co. in the way it combines the gaseous ambience of a good synth wash, with understated - but still danceable - four four beats and the slightest touch of early trance.
Someone on Reddit suggested that Burial could be gearing up for a huge festival show with this kind of sound (and track title), which seems hugely unlikely, but, musically at least, would actually work. Hop aboard for Bural-fest 2026; free McDonalds and night buses for all.
Rufige Kru - Still The Same (feat. CASISDEAD) (Special Request remix)
Rufige Kru’s recent album, Alpha Omega, was a fantastic LP, whose pitch black focus and artful angles didn’t allow for a great deal of raving or levity. That wasn’t really the point, of course, but all the same it is refreshing to hear Paul Woolford unleash Rufige Kru’s inner party beast on Still The Same, a remix that is twisted, bouncy, scary and kind of funny at the same time, CASISDEAD’s vocal artfully cut up into 100 different hooks, while the bass line drones and billows like an attack of rabid bees. Those two classic rave stabs, carefully rationed out over the song, are a lovely touch, too.
Things I’ve Done
Line Noise podcast with Kittin
I spoke to the legendary Caroline Hervé - aka (Miss) Kittin - for the Line Noise podcast ahead of her devastating Primavera Sound set about electroclash, 2000s nostalgia, the passing of time and her fantastic lyrics.
The DJ who united the warring tribes of French rap and dance – and died far too young
Yup it’s Mehdi! Who I have written about here before. And I got to write about again for The Guardian. The thrust is, basically, what made Mehdi so different, as Arte’s brilliant documentary about him gets a Europe-wide release.
The playlists
I have two: The newest and bestest 2025; and The newest and the bestest. They are both on Spotify, in the name of reaching the largest amount of people. Does that justify it? Maybe not. Funnily enough, I personally use Apple Music, so maybe I should shift to there, although the functionality isn’t as good. I don’t know. What do you think?
Good read! My sinister 14-year old self loved "Losing My Religion", but hated "Shiny Happy People". Always loved Burial but he's lost me a bit since around Antidawn. Definitely going to check out that Paul St. Hilaire / Mala record though!