Monocled Alchemist

Published in NME, 4th December 1982

Siouxsie And The Banshees | Gig Review | Hammersmith Palais 1982 | THERE WAS something thuddingly sudden about the end of it all. Barely was that last note of ‘Spellbound’ disappearing than the group were doing likewise, and the house lights were on and we were all filing silently for the exit doors.

No agitation or clamour. No raucous chanting in defiance of the night. Everything might have seemed uncomfortably cold had we just seen anyone but Siouxsie And The Banshees.

As it was, though, I suspect the general mood was one of fulfilment, not disappointment or emptiness. When you’ve absorbed the special and peculiar magic of the Banshee show then no lingering demonstrations of affection seem necessary or even particularly fitting.

There are other acts whose medicine is not to be taken internally — so you laugh and thrash around and generally wear your enjoyment on the outside —but this group invites a response that’s no less warm and satisfying for being so personal.

Not that Siouxsie is everyone’s chalice of hemlock, of course. If the darkness at the heart of the music’s fascination fails to connect with your pleasure centres then it’s odds-on you’ll not see more than a calculated pose and monotonous gloom. But to me, the singer’s stage role clicks into the material’s mystery like a key inside a lock . . . turn it once, and savour the delicious suspense of a forbidden door.

Siouxsie And The Banshees | Gig Review | Hammersmith Palais 1982

Darkness. It’s either what puts you off the songs or draws you in. It can be a messy, frustrating chore, this job of conveying sounds with words, and darkness will just have to do. The best thing about the Banshees’ darkness is it’s the most effective backdrop for the flashes of light and colour — the-same reason we wait for nightfall before setting off fireworks.

And ‘Fireworks’ starts the set. Adding daggers to the sound is a three-girl string section (Carolyne Lavelle, Ann Stephenson, Virginia Hewes), hidden high on a platform at the back and shrouded by swirling mists. The guitar is played by Robert Smith of The Cure, deputising for the absent John McGeoch (still recovering from illness).

It’s the second stand-in stint he’s done for the band and Smith’s familiarity and empathy with the Banshees is well-established, to the extent that he can merge in more or less perfectly. But it’s only natural that his contributions must be more subdued, less swaggering, than the bold shafts and patterns we’d expect to hear if McGeoch was there.

Very definitely present, however, is that throbbing generator of a rhythm section: bassist Severin and drummer Budgie. The one stands impassive, the other is a mad blur with approximately eight arms and three legs.

The noise that’s born of the pair’s collaboration is at once dense and fluid, heavy yet flowing — strong enough to support the demands of Sioux’s melodramatic delivery; sufficiently subtle, so it avoids crude bombast.

Siouxsie And The Banshees | Gig Review | Hammersmith Palais 1982

‘Melt’, from the new LP (their fourth, and maybe even their best — a real departure from rock tradition there) slows the momentum, but allows the vocalist a display of grace and control. ‘Night Shift’ jerks us back to the jagged path, a song of shuddering revulsion with awesome reserves of menace. And it’s good the set still finds room for The Creatures — that’s Budgie and Siouxsie’s joint adventure (Severin and Smith’s tea-break) with the inclusion of ‘Thumb’, all sombre and processional.

Siouxsie herself, despite all the voice-loss fuss of earlier this year, doesn’t betray any signs of strain, except perhaps for a little waywardness in the singing of ‘Arabian Knights’. In all, her hold on the proceedings is imperious as ever — aloof and spectacular. In fact the few numbers on which she straps on a guitar seem uneasy —not because of her playing, but for the way it inhibits her movement, deadening the visual impact of the line-up, leaving a sort of vacuum.

The last quarter of the performance runs through some of the other 45s, like ‘Happy House’ and ‘Israel’, which have proved the Banshees’ transcendence of those old categories ‘singles band’ and ‘albums band’. They’re neither, because they’re obviously both. And, as compelling as they can be in a studio, they can make some thing unique from live work also. (Paul Du Noyer)