Music today was Siouxsie and the Banshees‘ tenth album, Superstition (1991). It starred their biggest US hit with Kiss Them For Me which reached No. 23 on the US charts – Siouxsie in the video looking very sophisticated, quite different to the punk days, all grown up. Talvin Singh adds India on the tabla. I really like Kiss Them For Me, a proper song, lots of bells and whistles but a proper song – I can’t say the same for Fear (Of The Unknown), it sounds like ‘then’, sure, but it’s stuck there. Cry, better, leads to Drifter, different. This makes me wish they’d carried on beyond The Rapture for another ten albums of adventuring, but I suppose that’s what The Creatures were. Little Sister continues the exploration and Shadowtime continues the search for another single on the album.

By Silly Thing, it’s all starting to sound a bit too computerised, losing its heart and soul, the big problem of the eras and their demands to sound like the period they are in, sometimes the trend of the now isn’t the best sound for the band and its songs. Got To Get Up follows with snappy drums and anything organic is buried deep underground. The unsurprising sound of drum machine on Silver Waterfalls makes you realise that this is another album where the producer (Stephen Hague) is firmly putting his stamp on the sound. Sure, the band want to try new things but somewhere in Softly lies another fascinating side of Siouxsie hidden away in the production. The Ghost In You snaps itself brightly to the end, leaving all warmth in the coffee machine in the foyer, the only machine with warmth in the building. There are some good songs in here somewhere, unfortunately, it’s 1991 that’s deciding the direction.

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.