tracks on LP: Hong Kong Garden | Mirage | The Staircase Mystery | Playground Twist | Love In A Void | Happy House | Christine | Israel | Spellbound | Arabian Nights
Record label: Polydor POLD 5156
Released: 04/12/81
Purchased: 28/12/81
Siouxsie and the Banshees | Once Upon A Time/The Singles | (Polydor) 1981 | I’m tempted towards sarcasm on sight of this record. For artisans so dedicated to bypassing the procedures inherent in, in the words of Mr Morley’s brief sleevenote, “the quaking rocks of a fragmenting pop culture”, the gesture of a hits package shaped up for the Christmas market seeps with nefariously disguised (calling it ‘The Singles’, a designation as some religious adjunct to the Banshees album collection; and plastering the back cover with childishly sinister dolls’ faces, the by now obligatory nod to their obsession with menace in the nursery) commercial intent. Let me not be Scrooge this week, though.
‘Once Upon A Time’ has to stand on its contents: from “Hong Kong Garden” to “Arabian Knights”, nine A-sides (including the faked notoriety of “Love In A Void”, which now sounds like a Cramps-type thrash) plus “Mirage” from ‘The Scream’. The tune is a better one, unsweetened by a charming melody or blandishments of forgiveness. Sioux and her troupers have never been ones to make it easy for their public. Or have they?
I listen and listen and I hear the sound of pretence. Pretending is a primary element in pop’s illusory game – hoe else can feelings be interchanged so readily? – and the Banshees have never turned it away. All of these songs play tag with Nightmare, alienation, the cruel and the unnatural; they never embrace them. This is the stuff of which pop hits are made, not the awful scouring of the soul.
Perhaps that particular joke is on us, though laughs are not to be found here. The oppressive seriousness is one thing that weakens this collection – a po-faced delineation of strangeness which almost creaks on “Mirage” and “The Staircase (Mystery)”. The sheer greyness of the playing is another. Again, the early Banshees seemed to be only toying with some transfixed madness which they found impossible to articulate – this wasn’t thrillingly enigmatic, only indigestibly obtuse.
Siouxsie and the Banshees | Once Upon A Time/The Singles | (Polydor) 1981
All that changed, of course, with the exit of McKay and Morris. Any of the tracks on side two, starting with the intriguingly open-ended “Happy House”, beat the first side’s maundering guitar churn hollow (with the honourable exception of “Hong Kong Garden”, a two-chord enchantment that fluked by on self-determination – the Banshees’ debut was going to be so brilliant that it very nearly was).
“Christine” and “Israel” showed how much they’d learned about space. Everything sounds gassily clear; instead of the miserable opacity of the Mark 1 Banshees, every strand is definable. In “Spellbound”, with its pelting cascade of acoustic chords, they found a song of almost glamorous quality. “Arabian Knights” is not quite so good, but it is scenting after something greater – an inspiration I could never hear before.
After all, they now have a musician of some excellence in their fold. Few could match the insistent intelligence and diversity which John McGeoch brings to these few tracks. Even the singer, still tied up in her role of Snow Queen in a netherworld of suppressed emotions, has progressed to expand on an idea of singing which once choked on its own privacy.
The Banshees’ history to date, a significance over emphasised. It does show a growth from a calumny of wilful unattractiveness to an almost wistful foreboding. Whether you see it as a palliative in any way might depend on how much faith you place in prestidigitation. Let’s pretend. (NME, 05/12/81)
Siouxsie and the Banshees | Once Upon A Time/The Singles | (Polydor) 1981
The Banshees / Buzzcocks singles LPs reviewed
The BAD thing about singles is having to keep getting up to change the bloody things. The good thing about the recession is that record companies are forced to put out compilations. With the Buzzcocks and the Banshees this is no mean feat. Via several seminal singles both enjoyed a certain degree of commercial success while others just as good didn’t do so well. Both serve to remind us what was and what ought to have been.
The Buzzcocks were the first punk band to get a deal after scoring heavily on their own independent label. They then undermined punk’s pseudo-political puerility by producing passionately poignant powerpop with wry, pointed lyrics.
They released 11 singles on UA, the concluding trio of which went off at a tangent and which their record company has chosen to forget about. Nevertheless, captured for your exclusive enjoyment are such masterpieces as the soaring “What Do I Get?”, the bitter “Orgasm Addict”, the profound “Ever Fallen In Love” and the more cynical, sell-out pap like “Promises” and “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays”.
On Side Two, in the same conscientious, chronological order are the original ‘A’-sides and ‘B’-sides such as the essential “Autonomy” and “Noise Annoys”, the latter the cut which first hinted at Pete Shelley’s aspirations to move into more ambitious areas. I wish him luck in his solo career.
Siouxsie and the Banshees | Once Upon A Time/The Singles | (Polydor) 1981
Siouxsie And The Banshees were the last punk band from the school of ’76 to get a record deal, and that was only after ‘Sign Siouxsie’ graffiti appeared at every London record company’s entrance.
Still, they made up for lost time by showing the first stirrings of the post-punk “industrial” sound. Like The Fall and preceding Joy Division, they mastered the art of the questioning yelp, the flanging guitar technique and the ominous rhythmic rumble.
With the brilliant, timeless and original “Hong Kong Garden” they crashed into the charts but haven’t enjoyed as much success since. No matter. “Mirage”, “Playground Twist”, “Happy House”, “Christine”, “Israel” and “Spellbound” remain fine songs and one imagines that the videos to go with these 10 former ‘A’ sides will be similarly riveting.
If there are any omissions in your Banshees / Buzzcocks collections, buy these. Essential items of the era, both. +++++ (Record Mirror, 12/12/81)
Leave a Reply