“… The Scream’s contents were nonetheless compelling, not to mention significantly different from anything previously pigeonholed as simply ‘punk.’ Built upon the bedrock of Morris’ tribal, tom-heavy drums and McKay’s guttural, metallic guitar, ‘Jigsaw Feeling’ and ‘Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)’ were stark and monochromatic; the domestic violence-related ‘Suburban Relapse’ (influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho) was brutally harrowing; and even the record’s lone cover version – an eerie deconstruction of The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’ – provided little in the way of respite. Contemporaneous critics, however, unanimously doled out five-star praise, and Sounds enthusiastically proclaimed the record to be ‘the best debut album of the year.’ … Four decades on, its primal power still cuts through loud and clear. …”
‘The Scream’: The Primal Power Of Siouxsie & The Banshees’ Debut Album (Video)
Discogs (Video)
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Tag: Siouxsie and the Banshees
Hong Kong Garden – Siouxsie And The Banshees (1978)
“… ‘I used to go along with my friend and just be really upset by the local skinheads that hung out there,’ said Siouxsie after witnessing racist taunts against the staff. She turned her anger into song. The Banshees’ guitarist, John McKay, provided an intro, which his bandmates first heard on a tour bus during 1977.At rehearsals, McKay played the opening bars on an electronic xylophone and Siouxsie added her serrated vocals. The punk-lite ‘Hong Kong Garden’ was first aired on a John Peel session, prompting Polydor to sign the band in 1978. … It wasn’t written as a single, but after waiting over a year to be signed, and with the song established as a live favourite, their manager Nils Stevenson pitched it as their best shot. They were reluctantly booked into Olympic Studios with an American soul producer, Bruce Albertine, using downtime between Eric Clapton sessions. They failed to capture the right sound. Within days they had regrouped with a young producer from the right side of the punk tracks, Steve Lillywhite. It took them two days to re-record ‘Hong Kong Garden’, replicating the earlier version cut for the Peel session, but this time climaxing with the crash of an orchestral gong. Much anticipated in the summer of 1978, following months of music media speculation, it made it to number seven on the charts and was arguably the most important of the early post-punk hits.”
Independent – Story of the song: Hong Kong Garden, Siouxsie and the Banshees (1978)
W – Hong Kong Garden (song)
YouTube: Hongkong Garden 1979 (Live)
YouTube: Hong Kong Garden, Voices (On The Air)
Siouxsie and the Banshees – Juju (1981)
“In 1981, British rock was in a transitional phase. Punk had, by then, all but completely faded out, and new wave and post-punk were shaping fresh ideas of how rock could sound. It was in this environment that Siouxsie and the Banshees were set to record their fourth album Juju. After going through a lineup change before their previous release, and with guitarist John McGeoch now cemented as an official member, the band was ready to experiment with their sound, to create lyrical and melodic concepts that would mesh together cohesively as one work. The band created and molded the songs for Juju while on tour, working the songs out live and letting them take the dark, theatrical, romantic shape that would give the album its singular sound, the final product of which would help define the subset of post-punk that would come to be known as ‘goth rock.’ In this episode, we discuss this move from punk to post-punk, detail the Banshees’ stylistic choices and conceptual soundscapes, and (surprise) have a conversation about feminism and punk rock. …”
77MusicClub (Audio/Video)
Dissecting the deathly mystique of Siouxsie And The Banshees (Video)
Why Siouxsie And The Banshees’ ‘Juju’ Casts Such A Potent Spell (Video/Audio)
Siouxsie And The Banshees: “We were losing our minds”
W – Juju
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YouTube: Into The Light, Spellbound (Official Music Video), Arabian Knights (Live), Voodoo Dolly (Live)
Wild Things – The Creatures EP (1981)
“Wild Things is the first release by British duo the Creatures (singer Siouxsie Sioux and drummer Budgie). It was issued on 25 September 1981 by Polydor Records as two 7″ single records in a ‘double-album’ style card cover, and is usually referred to as an EP. It peaked in the UK Singles Chart at No. 24, and the pair performed “Mad Eyed Screamer” on Top of the Pops. … The initial idea for Wild Things, and the Creatures, came about during the recording sessions for the Siouxsie and the Banshees album Juju. While bassist Steven Severin and guitarist John McGeoch took a break, Siouxsie and drummer Budgie created the song ‘But Not Them.’ Deciding that it was complete as a drum-and-voice piece, they left it alone, and quickly recorded four more minimal tracks to accompany it. The result was the Wild Things EP (so named by Severin, who upon hearing it, said it sounded like something the creatures in the book Where the Wild Things Are would have danced to on their island). The only cover version on the EP was the Troggs‘ ‘Wild Thing‘; Siouxsie added extra angry lyrics to the original ‘Wild thing, I think I hate you/but I wanna know for sure/so come on, hit me hard/I hate you’. ‘So Unreal’ drew inspiration from the novel The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin, and ‘Mad Eyed Screamer’ from local characters met in Hyde Park, London. The duo incorporated the songs ‘But Not Them’, ‘So Unreal’ and ‘Thumb’ into Banshees concerts for many years afterwards. The erotic sleeve art featuring Siouxsie and Budgie half-naked under a shower was inspired by the pictures of Man Ray; the artwork caused some controversy. Another shoot, inspired by the John Millais painting Ophelia, featured the singer naked under many flowers and shallow water. …”
Wikipedia
allmusic
Genius (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Mad Eyed Screamer, So Unreal, Wild Things, But Not Them, Thumb
Siouxsie and the Banshees – Playground Twist / Pulled to bits (1979)
Wikipedia – “‘Playground Twist‘ is a song by English post-punk band Siouxsie and the Banshees. It was released in 1979 by record Polydor as the sole single from the band’s second album, Join Hands (1979). … NME‘s Roy Carr hailed the single and wrote: ‘If Ingmar Bergman produced records, they might sound like this. The listener is immediately engulfed in a maelstrom of whirling sound punctuated by the ominous tolling of church bells, phased guitars, thundering percussion, a surreal alto sax and the wail of Siouxsie’s voice. It demands to be played repeatedly at the threshold-of-pain volume to elicit its full nightmarish quality’. …”
Wikipedia
YouTube: Playground Twist, Pulled to bits
Punk Scrawled Artist 