From inauspicious beginnings, as a scratch band of SEX shop denizens blagging their way onto the stage of the 100 Club for Malcolm McLaren’s 1976 punk festival, Siouxsie And The Banshees blazed a trail through the ’80s and beyond with one of the great post-punk discographies. Goth? Shoegaze? Trip-hop? They pretty much invented all that, while Siouxsie herself redefined what a frontwoman could be. As she embarks on her first proper tour since 2008, we celebrate her insurgent hits and seminal deep cuts.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Metal Postcard”
(John Peel Session, 1977)
Despite Siouxsie’s facile declaration that she was “more into high camp than death camps”, her penchant for swastikas cast a disturbing shadow over early Banshees gigs. Debuted on their first session for John Peel, and dedicated to Dadaist and anti-fascist artist John Heartfield, “Metal Postcard” hinted at a sophistication beyond their punk peers.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Hong Kong Garden”
(Single, 1978)
Finally signed to Polydor in 1978, the Banshees recorded their debut single with Steve Lillywhite after initial sessions with Bruce Albertine went awry. The result was this striking (if naive) comment on British colonialism and the immigrant experience, the angular guitars topped with a bubblegum orientalist xylophone riff. It was the first post-punk single to reach the Top 10.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Suburban Relapse”
(The Scream, 1978)
If the lead single had emphasised the Banshees’ pop chops, it was a gateway to the hard stuff of their debut album, The Scream: an uncompromising caterwaul of dismay. Most striking was “Suburban Relapse”, anatomising domestic violence like X-Ray Spex, but with John McKay’s guitars emulating Bernard Herrmann’s strings to take the song into Psycho territory.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Playground Twist”
(Join Hands, 1979)
“If Ingmar Bergman produced records, they might sound like this,” proclaimed the NME on the release of the Banshees’ third single in June 1979. Somehow breaching the Top 30, “Playground Twist” is the first intimation of the band’s dawning, darkling psychedelia, like a bad-trip version of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Icon”
(Join Hands, 1979)
Join Hands, the Banshees’ second album, was originally intended to have a creepily distorted image from a communion card on the cover. The religious overtones spooked Polydor, but were nevertheless abundant on “Icon”, with its images of self-mutilation, the stop-start Wire dynamics giving way to a more complex tumult.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Christine”
(Kaleidoscope, 1980)
Following the departure of John McKay and Kenny Morris mid-tour in 1979, prospects for the Banshees seemed dim, but their defiant intransigence somehow produced the uncanny “Happy House”, aided by the expressionist guitar of John McGeoch. It was quickly bettered by “Christine”, McGeoch’s cascades of acoustic wonder providing the soundtrack to Siouxsie’s voyage into the kaleidoscope of the schizophrenic psyche, and the beginning of the band’s imperial phase.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Spellbound”
(Juju, 1981)
Arguably the Banshees’ finest single, a furious soulstorm conjured by John McGeoch’s sublime 12-string guitar and Budgie’s booming drums. Though it failed to crack the Top 20 when released as a single in May 1981, thanks to its use in the finale of Stranger Things Season 4, it’s also now their most-streamed song.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Night Shift”
(Juju, 1981)
Though its parent album Juju is in many ways the rock upon which the church of goth was founded, the tenebrous “Night Shift”, inspired by Peter Sutcliffe’s murderous trail through the red-light districts of late-’70s Yorkshire and Lancashire, is profoundly darker and more disturbing than anything that emerged from the Batcave.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Slowdive”
(A Kiss In The Dreamhouse, 1982)
1982’s A Kiss In The Dreamhouse, a direct influence on the nascent Cocteau Twins, is shoegazing’s ground zero. But ironically the song that named one of that genre’s most languorous leading lights is the album’s most crazed, upbeat moment.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Melt!”
(A Kiss In The Dreamhouse, 1982)
On …Dreamhouse, all the Banshees’ intimate, psychological horror exploded into a peerless, glittering neo-psychedelia, abetted by Mike Hedges’ production and strings recorded at Abbey Road. “Melt!” is its sumptuous pinnacle, like John Barry collaborating with Gustav Klimt.
THE CREATURES
“Miss The Girl”
(Feast, 1983)
Conceived out of their growing romantic relationship, Siouxsie and Budgie first formed The Creatures in 1981 during a break in the recording of Juju. But their finest hour is Feast, an infatuated fever dream conjured up in Hawaii, combining exotica and JG Ballard. This eerie marimba lullaby, the album’s only single, reached No 21 in April 1983.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Tattoo”
(“Dear Prudence” B-side, 1983)
The Banshees’ version of “Dear Prudence” became the band’s biggest British single, only kept off the No 1 spot by the combined forces of Culture Club and Tracey Ullman. But it’s B-side “Tattoo” that proved the stealth hit, its claustrophobic mood and insistent rhythm influencing the likes of Tricky, who covered the song on his Nearly God album in 1996.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Dazzle”
(Hyæna, 1984)
The Bunnymen laid down the gauntlet with the swooning, orchestral Ocean Rain, but the Banshees rose to the challenge with “Dazzle”, the imperious opening track of their sixth LP, Hyæna. It was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, “Skating bullets on angel dust/In a dead sea of fluid mercury”.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Swimming Horses”
(Hyæna, 1984)
Hinting at the surreal anthropological adventures that had begun on …Dreamhouse, this single was the Banshees’ first to be co-written with Robert Smith and features one of Budgie’s most astonishing rhythms.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Trust In Me”
(Through The Looking Glass, 1987)
Covers album Through The Looking Glass felt like a band straining to get back in touch with the seedy, freaky, futuristic glamour of Iggy, Roxy, Bowie and Sparks that had sustained them as bored kids in early-’70s suburbia. However, the highlight was this sublime cover of Kaa the snake’s song from Disney’s Jungle Book.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Peek-A-Boo”
(Peepshow, 1988)
The Banshees brilliantly reinvented themselves with 1988’s Peepshow, which refitted their slinky, transgressive soundworld to the era of Prince and Madonna, somehow coming out sounding both more pop and more transgressive than either.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“Kiss Them For Me”
(Superstition, 1991)
The Banshees repeated the comeback trick with “Kiss Them For Me”. With the help of producer Stephen Hague, it combined a 909 beat from Schoolly D with the spirit of Hollywood Babylon to create a track that felt both up-to-the-minute and timeless, presaging the transglobal avant-dance of Björk.
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
“The Double Life”
(The Rapture, 1995)
The height of Britpop was not a congenial time to be a Banshee, and the group’s final album The Rapture was a lacklustre affair. But this eerie spoken-word track – looking back at centuries of “sin and aftermath” – proved to be a fitting swansong.
THE CREATURES
“2nd Floor”
(Anima Animus, 1999)
The first Creatures LP to be conceived as a statement in itself rather than an interim side project, Anima Animus took the band’s early experiments in rhythm and voice to the electronic dancefloor – notably on the lead single, “2nd Floor”, which sounded like Underworld descending into the abyss.
SIOUXSIE
“Into a Swan”
(Mantaray, 2007)
Siouxsie’s belated solo debut Mantaray felt like a victory lap, acknowledging her influence on acolytes from Curve to Björk, Suede to Goldfrapp. The lead single was typically commanding, channelling the spirit of T.Rex for a new millennium.
Siouxsie plays Wolverhampton Civic Hall, June 21; Tynemouth Priory And Castle, July 7; Latitude festival, July 23; Kelvingrove Bandstand, Glasgow, July 25; Troxy, London, September 6 & 7