Music today was Juju (1981), the fourth Siouxsie and the Banshees album, the second with John McGeoch on guitar as a full member as it was for Budgie on the drums. Opening with Spellbound, careering simultaneously into the distance and towards you with driving rhythm guitar and arpeggios, memorable melodies from Siouxsie and distinctive bass from Severin locking in with McGeoch and Budgie. Into The Light has some of the most inventive and strange guitar lines. The second single Arabian Knights has something of a dodgy video although aren’t they all in the eighties, luckily we can listen to the music without the videos. More interesting guitars on Halloween but it’s always the chemistry that makes standout parts possible. I suppose no one has ever compared one of the great post-punk albums to the Liverpool football team but for every Salah, there’s a Trent Alexander-Arnold.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that if Kate Bush was the madwoman who escaped, Siouxsie sounds like the mad sister they still have locked up. The band, Budgie, Severin and McGeoch, posing as doctors are breaking her out of the asylum singing and playing Monitor during the getaway. Night Shift is the hiding till they call off the search. Sin In My Heart is the awakening again with some great McGeoch guitar parts. Always a fan of Head Cut, it sounds like an outtake from Eno’s Here Come The Warm Jets if Eno was a wild cat or a serious scary cartoon-free B-52s with a fantastic vocal performance. It’s art-rock, it must have been great live. Challenging, evocative and finishing with Voodoo Dolly, it gives Patti Smith a run for her money, a glorious screeching 7 minutes, I’ll be playing this to the construction workers at midnight when I find out where they live. What a great album.

Music Of The Daze

The musical musings in this post are an excerpt from my daily blog, TO WHERE I AM NOW, featured on my main website. See more pictures and read the full post here.