Pitchfork

Swing the Heartache consists of songs recorded for a variety of Bauhaus appearances on BBC radio, including two sessions recorded for the famed John Peel show. The band used these appearances to highlight material that they had either recently been playing around with or that they were seriously considering recording. Therefore, many songs that later wound up on Bauhaus albums were first recorded for the BBC.

While this makes the whole thing sound like the album is going to offer a deeper insight as to how some of the Bauhaus material evolved, the sad part is that most of the songs were pretty well already written, and the versions that appear here vary only slightly in performance. In fact, two well- known Bauhaus covers, Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" and Brian Eno's "Third Uncle" were lifted straight from the BBC sessions and plopped on down to their own single. For most of the rest of the songs, just imagine that you get to hear the official studio versions recorded a little more shoddily and with bad tape echo.

Swing the Heartache has a few points of redemption though, and one comes in the otherwise- unavailable recording titled "Party of the First Part," a jazz- influenced tale of selling your soul to the devil for fame and fortune; it features almost no Bauhaus vocals and instead uses an old cartoon dialog for the focus. Also included is the very raw Strangelove's cover "Night Time," which is about the only song the band ever recorded that actually dates them.

As a compilation, or an introduction to the band, the album falls far shy of its goal, as the band chose to skip some of their best material for their radio appearances. With the current wave of Bauhaus revival, it should be pretty easy to find someone to point out a better selection of the band's "best work ever." In the meantime, unless you're desperate to hear the three songs that aren't available on anything else, look for something else.