Peter Murphy - Deep

Deep is the album that turned Bauhaus's frontman into an unlikely fixture of American alternative radio. Released in 1989 on Beggars Banquet, Peter Murphy's third solo record found him working again with Paul Statham and producer Simon Rogers, and the result softened the gothic severity of his past into something closer to widescreen art rock.

The centerpiece is "Cuts You Up," a stately, string-laced single that spent an extraordinary run at the top of the US Modern Rock chart and remains the most recognizable song of Murphy's solo career. Around it the record moves through the swirling "Deep Ocean Vast Sea," the taut "Shy," and the harp-touched "Marlene Dietrich's Favourite Poem," with Murphy's baritone sitting front and center throughout. Recorded across Rockfield, Abbey Road, and The Wool Hall, it sounds considerably more expansive than anything he had made before.

More than three decades later Deep endures as the bridge between post-punk's first wave and the alternative mainstream that followed, and as proof that Murphy's voice was always capable of more than menace.

This LP reissue comes on classic black vinyl via Beggars Arkive. A properly presented pressing of a record that has been hard to find on wax for years.