Music today has been A Kiss In The Dreamhouse (1982), the most varied Siouxsie and the Banshees album so far. I keep on tying them somehow to Kate Bush via Patti Smith. Of course, they are their own unique and talented beast and one imagines that image-wise they don’t really crossover with Kate but I hear similar ideas and moods. Listen to The Dreaming released in the same year which is actually a far more challenging listen than this one dreamers. That isn’t to say that this isn’t a worthy album, it’s thoroughly enjoyable in its diversity and willingness to go to other places. Musically tasting other flavours from the opening track Cascade into Green Fingers and the surprising Obsession. I can’t help but think of other artists of the time, Nina Hagen, Lene Lovich, innovative contemporaries. Picking up on She’s A Carnival, probably a live favourite into the experimental backing track and melody of Circle, they are certainly trying different things in the studio.

One of the two singles, Melt!, is next with its visceral lyrics and surprisingly a single from the album:

You are the melting men
You are the situation
There is no time to breathe
And yet one single breath
Leads to an insatiable desire
Of suicide in sex

So many blazing orchids
Burning in your throat
Making you choke
Making you sigh
Sigh in tiny deaths

So melt!
My lover, melt!
he said, melt!
My lover, melt!

You are the melting men
And as you melt
You are beheaded
Handcuffed in lace, blood and sperm
Swimming in poison
Gasping in the fragrance
Sweat carves a screenplay
Of discipline and devotion

So melt!
My lover, melt!
She said, melt!
My lover, melt!

Can you see?
See into the back of a long, black car
Pulling away from the funeral of flowers
With my hand between your legs
Melting

She said, melt!
My lover, melt!
(She said) melt!
My lover, melt!
So melt!
My lover, melt!
She said, melt!
My lover, melt!

Painted Bird bridges another odd direction with Cocoon, Jazzy? The album ends with the first single from the album Slowdive. Before all this, there was a non-album single, Fireworks. It’s a band evolving, trying new things whilst keeping their vision of what music should do intact. It makes you wonder why they ever broke up.

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.