Mask

Mask was Bauhaus's first album for Beggars Banquet, after they left 4AD because the label could not keep up with their growing success. It added keyboards, acoustic guitar and saxophone to the band's sound. The Passion of Lovers uses keyboards and acoustic guitar, while Kick in the Eye, Dancing and In Fear of Fear lean on funk rhythms and saxophone. Murphy said one of the band's loves was to make each single totally different from the last. Ash drew the cover, and the writer Alan Moore wrote the sleeve notes.

Some of it was written as it was recorded. Murphy said Of Lillies and Remains was never rehearsed or worked out beforehand: they told the engineer to turn on the tape. The lyric was split between Murphy and David J, who each wrote a half without hearing the other's. On the title track, David J overdubbed an echoed bass part with a metal bottleneck, and the cascade effect arrives where Ash's acoustic twelve-string comes in.

Release and reception

The singles were Kick in the Eye, which reached number 59 in the UK, and The Passion of Lovers, which reached number 56. For the title track the band made a video, shot in an abandoned Victorian shoe factory in Northampton, as a promotional tool for the band rather than for a specific song. On tour they showed an experimental film, Consequences, in place of a support band. A 2009 Omnibus Edition added a disc of B-sides and alternate versions and a live disc recorded at Hammersmith Palais on 9 November 1981.

AllMusic's Ned Raggett called the album arguably even better than the band's almost flawless debut, and Trouser Press called it their finest achievement. Classic Rock's Jonathan Selzer wrote that Bauhaus sounded more expansive and less withdrawn without losing their austere aura. Mask is one of the albums in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, where Alexandra Heller-Nicholas wrote that more pop-friendly melodies made it digestible for a mainstream audience.