Poptone
Looking back at all the various Bauhaus spinoff bands that came and went whenever the prototypal goth rockers were uninterested in being Bauhaus, the first that comes to mind is Love and Rockets, who briefly proved to be far more the hit machine with cuts like their 1989 top-ten single “So Alive.” Tones on Tail may have been a less known Bauhaus splinter group, but they were no less beloved by aficionados, and their vintage track “Go!” has such legs that it still turns up in films like the Power Rangers reboot. Then there was the Bubblemen, also wildly different sounding from Bauhaus, with the one thing uniting all four bands being the duo of Daniel Ash and Kevin Haskins.
The pair teamed up again last year to create a new group, Poptone, rounded up by Haskins’ daughter, bassist Dive Dompé, and so far they’ve been performing new arrangements of old tracks from all their previous projects, as immortalized on a live album released last December featuring songs recorded on their first concert tour and live in the studio. The tracklist is probably akin to what you can expect when they play the Belly Up on May 10, including the aforementioned “Go!” as well as “Lions,” “Christian Says,” and “Twist” (all Tones on Tail), “An American Dream,” “Love Me,” and “Mirror People” (Love and Rockets), and the Bauhaus classic “Slice of Life.” You might also be treated to covers they’ve been known to whip out in concert, like Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” and Adam Ant’s “Physical.”