The Auteurs - After Murder Park

I always think I don't like this as much as Now I'm a Cowboy, but when I start to look at the tracks one by one I'm not sure why. I can't predict a winner here either, maybe "Unsolved Child Murder" for its horrible insidious sprightliness, but there are at least 6 worthy entries.

Probably Dead Sea Navigators, but I like Married to a Lazy Lover because the chorus sounds like vomiting

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title track by a hair.

this is a great, great record.

too difficult to choose. but unsolved child murder for the chirpy brass.

a classic album for sure. well mentioned in the graphic novel Phonogram.

"Light Aircraft on Fire" - Black joke metaphor for Haines' career, presumably. It's got a couple of smart one-liners and a suitably tailspinning climax but it's not a favourite.

"Child Brides" - Potential winner number 1. Stately dirge mode engaged, great chorus, but possibly only a drawn-out intro for

"Land Lovers" - More so than the last 2 albums you realise by now that you don't really know what he's singing about, but he's pissed off and he doesn't think much of human beings. Also that the band can rock like fuck when the mood takes.

"New Brat in Town" - I like this alright but it's kinda a weaker version of "Brainchild" maybe. The rhythm section works really hard on this record tho. Subtler deployment of strings, too.

"Everything You Say Will Destroy You" - Okay, this might win. It's a bit like the closing scene of Butch Cassidy if him and Sundance were played by scruffy book-wielding bodricks.

"Unsolved Child Murder" - "More hate mail through the door/Never knew that Sundays could be useful after all" might just be his best couplet ever. As long as small towns and tabloid newspapers exist, this song will never get old. Singer's perspective seems to change through three or four different people. "We can make him better" is heartbreaking.

"Married to a Lazy Lover" - This is the slow-burner, as lazy as its subject as it is. It's also great, with one of those 50s melodrama middle eights they do so well before its chin drops back into its chest and it mumbles to a close.

"Buddha" - I love this but I still don't get it. "Chinese Bakery" part 2 maybe? "Du-duh, du-duh, du-duh DOOOO" indeed.

"Tombstone" - Stone cold classic. Maybe the most Cowboy-y one. Baader-Meinhof reference, check. Elaborate revenge fantasy, check. Huge chorus, heck yes. Haines wildly undersinging too.

"Fear of Flying" - The quiet one that you don't notice for a few weeks but love to death once you do. The chorus swoons and refuses to resolve, there's almost a sense of peace, for a song about planes crashing and shotguns being within range. Like the dream of a soft, gentle crash that you have in mid-air.

"Dead Sea Navigators" - Another coldly deliberate mock-epic. Horribly close to home, I think. Maybe he's sincere, I don't know. Sincerely celebrating inertia? It works as the album's climax too, warming us down nicely for the pay-off.

"After Murder Park" - "Unsolved Child Murder" part 2, but character-specific, and inward-looking, and a bit 10 Rillington Place, somehow. And really quick.

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Light Aircraft On Fire for the riff. Beats Everything You Say... by a nose.

My favorite Auteurs album and a fantastic recording job by Steve Albini. Child Brides nips Dead Sea Navigators for pure epic sweep though many of the simple pop ditties are quite menacing as well.

I love "Light Aircraft On Fire" but the rest of the album leaves me cold, so easy choice

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

This is kinda sad.

(Turn-out, not result)

One of the best albums of the '90s, even though I don't rate Haines as a singer/vocalist/whatever at all. Three way tie between 'Light Aircraft On Fire', 'Unsolved Child Murder' and 'Land Lovers' ...

(for me, that is)

sudden realisation that Dead Sea Navigators; is basically 'The Clarke Sisters'

Listened to this at work on Monday, god Land Lovers kicks ass so fuckin hard when it takes off after the sneeze

Fantastic album. Luke burned out so fast, unfortunately.

was just thinking about this record earlier today, still great. "unsolved child murder" is incredible compact songwriting

This was my least played Auteurs album for years. Give it another go, eh

"Light Aircraft on Fire" and "Fear of Flying" are OK, but the singing is so full of itself on this record, and a lot of the lyrics seem like nihilism-by-numbers.

The record made me think of Elvis Costello sweating blood to make an answer record to In Utero.