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It's still pretty vague.  Pretty and vague.  It's not about love or annihilation.  Siouxsie & The Banshees avoid meaning like the plague, and this feline wisdom has always served them well.  Grace, they understand.  The sleek.  If 'Peek A Boo' is hip hop, I'm LL Cool J.  The Banshees are strolling further away than ever from force, for brutality.  The eleventh album doesn't set fire to my palms, but it quivers with psalms and it knows how to breathe while kissing.  And that all heady things spiral.

As voyeurs, they are more discreet.  They've recognised which floorboards creak and don't condemn idiosyncrasy.  Still the words are nursery rhymes (nursery rhymes always involve insidious violence and strategic cruelty), but sonically, the blue angels of punk are sending out splendid sonorous rafts, touching new glittering bannisters with soluble fingernails.  There's a kind of gentlemen's agreement to gloss over the nest of difficulties any careful reflections might unearth.  The imaginative sophistry and romanticism of the Banshees can therefore mean all things to anybody, embarrassing the gospel of rationality and clarifying chaos by paying it lip service with that gloss.  Learn to embrace disorder and we are sensuous De Vincis.  The Banshees remain coolly independent on the slyest of feminine touches.

The glamour of inevitability therefore crystallises the charms and values of these low key sprays and fragrances.  You can pick up basic roots - an Au Pairs or Xmal Deutschland chord routine here, a Japan keyboard spell there, 'Lucy In The Sky' at one pause, a Westworld melody(!!) ghosting through at another, even a sister of 'Dazzle', if you must - but 'Peepshow' is hesitantly hypnotic.  It seduces you back.  They've not come up with any smashing new tunes, but the click and tut of Siouxsie's tongue are more intimate, forsaking aloofness for an alternate sincerity.  She sounds like it all means a lot to her.  As I've said, it doesn't (mustn't), but the glad eye is beguiling.

More than ever, the composition credits go to Sioux or Severin individually, this accounting for the suppliant proximity of their airs.  Sioux's 'Turn To Stone' and 'Rawhead And Bloodybones' are simply disquieting, 'Burn Up' is flushed with Eros.  Severin's 'Rhapsody' allows some stirring melodrama but the infinite pinnacle is their one joint effort, the bravura hymn 'The Last Beat Of My Heart'.  As Martin McCarrick's accordian and Budgie's directly intelligent rhythms underlie it's pathos, this elegy is translated by Sioux with capital beatitude.  It's the Banshees' most courageous arabesque in some time.  If they have enough majesty in their guts to put it out as a single we really will be witnessing a renaissance.

The lady is too vaporous to vanish.  In this Valhalla, her valour derides prattle and subtly strives for scintillation.  You can see the woods because of a warm breeze.  Conceivably, the icefield is melting.  

Chris Roberts

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Creeping up the backstairs
Slinking into dark stalls
Shapeless and slumped in bath chairs
Furtive eyes peep out of holes

She has many guises
She'll do what you want her to
Playing dead and sweet submission
Cracks the whip deadpan on cue

Peek-a-boo Peek-a-boo
Peek-a-boo Peek-a-boo

Reeking like a pigsty
Peeling back and gagging free
Flaccid ego in your hand
Chokes on dry tears, can you understand?

She's jeering at the shadows
Sneering behind a smile
Lunge and thrust to pout and pucker
Into the face of the beguiled

Peek-a-boo Peek-a-boo
Golly jeepers
Where'd you get those peepers?
Peepshow, creepshow
Where did you get those eyes?

Strobe lights pump and flicker
Dry lips crack out for more
`Come bite on this rag doll, baby!
That's right, now hit the floor'

They're sneaking out the back door
She gets up from all fours
Rhinestone fools and silver dollars
Curdle into bitter tears

Peek-a-boo Peek-a-boo
Golly jeepers
Where'd you get those peepers?
Peepshow, creepshow
Where did you get those eyes?

Down where this ugly man
Seeks his sustenance
Down in the blue, midnight flare
A glass hand cuts through the water
Scything into his twisted roots
Then from his eyes spring fireflies
Breathing life into a roaring disguise

Needles and sins, sins and needles
He's gasping for air
In the wishing well
Dust to rust, ashes to gashes
Hand around the killing jar

A soft hoodwink of shadow
The size of make-believe
Punches through his spike of rage
A glass hand cuts through the water
Snuffing out the magic fury
Then from inside bolt lightning cries
Swiftly crushed the final, muffled sighs

Needles and sins, sins and needles
He's gasping for air
In the wishing well
Dust to rust, ashes to gashes
Hand around the killing jar

John Fowles The Collector

He trembles in the bitter wind
Until it's time for us to speak
Whilst others here are sleeping sound
I'll slip away by floorboard creak

Upon the hill he'll hear my secrets
Shock the colours to bleach inside
Whilst others there are sleeping sound
Just we two will confide

Listen to his body moan
Make a wish and send us home
To spin the gold and silver stitches
We can turn his rags to riches

With frosty Jack on fingernail
Thro' shoe black smile he'll tell-a-tale
Come whisper thro' your lips of straw
A moment torn forever more

Listen to his body groan
Make a wish and send us home
To spin the gold and silver stitches
We can turn his rags to riches

My so-called friends say you're not alive
I'll bake their bones for telling lies
Then pull the pastry from the pie
And pour the gravy in their eye

Listen to his body moan
Make a wish and send us home
To spin the gold and silver stitches
We can turn his rags to riches

You clamber up
And look behind
Their watchful eyes
The helping hands
A hen that's fierce
And painted blue
With red eyes
Wants to swallow you

A dragon dives and soars on tracks
The hands that strap you to its back
You turn around and look behind
Their smiling eyes won't help you down

Their tiny hands
Their tiny feet
Such little hearts
To miss a beat
Grotesque dwarves
In mirrored rooms
Pulled and taut
A thousand yous

Staring back through stinging tears
Remembering those funhouse thrills
The paint box tunes and wild balloons
Their watchful eyes, you start to swoon

Oh painted vile in lurid hue
The snarling horse that waits for you
Its motor whirr's and colours curl
Inside your head the monsters whirl
 
Its motor whirls and colours curl
Inside your head the monsters whirl

In sucked out
Time stood still
Roundabout back
Carousel
Time stood still
And you remember it well
Carousel

A crumpled future in your fist
The killing streak ascends sun kissed
And the fire starter from within
Pokes out from fever blistered grin

King Salamander that's his name
A desert maker that's his aim
The benign cremator, branding iron in his hand
Eager and willing to torch the land

All fire and brimstone
This jack-o-lantern
He likes to watch the buildings burn

His ardour smoulders, phosphorous flies
He radiates with urgence to hypnotise
Stoke the furnace, feed his need
This thirst for fire is all he seeks

He's the blazing rubber making tracks
The blue touch paper at your back

All fire and brimstone
This salamander king
He basks while all around him burns

`Giddy-up, burn-up, not fade away'
These words ignite and pave his way
`Giddy-up, burn-up, stoke it up and turn it up'
He sings these words in fervid frame

All fire and brimstone
This jack-o-lantern
He likes to watch the pyres burn

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack jump over the candlestick

Silver couches to recline upon
And ornaments of gold
Silver moonbeams dance in fountains
Below shining citadels

Surrounded by silver gates ascending silver stairs
Eureka on angelic prayer wafts in and scents the air

With ornaments of gold
To warm my soul from the growing cold
Ornaments of gold

We can drink from silver vessels
We can feed from silver bowls
Then I'll give you gilded treasures
Anointed by intoxicating oils

Drenched in riches unimaginable
Your splendour drips with jewels that are so beautiful

And ornaments of gold
Warm my soul from the growing cold
Ornaments of gold

Adorable, rewardable you
From head to toe I'd love to cover you
And smother you in ornaments of gold

In honeydew I'd love to cover you
Oh lover do bring
Ornaments of gold
Protect our hearts from this cruel world
Ornaments of gold

High above
The sickle moon
All senseless thought
Slips and drowns
A place, a time
Gone out of mind
Reaction swims
The opal tide

Ferry me down, leave well alone
Ferry me down, turn to stone

Here within
My phantom flesh
Welcome in
The glowing guest
Far inside
The absolute
Instinct leaves
Us standing mute

Ferry me down, leave well alone
Ferry me down, turn to stone

Heaven sent
Some dark marvel
Fool's gold
As cold as marble

High above
The sickle moon
Your hidden dreams
Chill and swoon
A place, a time
Gone out of sight
Pulse the blood
Statue of light

Ferry me down, leave well alone
Ferry me down, turn to stone

Bad word,
Or bad deed,
Unpunished invites grief,
Here's Rawhead and Bloodybones
Reaching from
Dark cupboard
Crouching under stair,
Lurking in chimney,
Pond or well
We're down here,
Held here
Dragged here
And drowned here by
Rawhead and Bloodybones
Pop eyed,
Horns,
Bushy tailed
Long teeth and
Claws as well
Rawhead and Bloodybones

In the sharp gust of love
My memory stirred
When time wreathed a rose
A garland of shame
Its thorn my only delight
War torn, afraid to speak
We dare to breathe

Majestic
Imperial
A bridge of sighs

Solitude sails
In a wave of forgiveness
On angels' wings
 
Reach out your hands
Don't turn your back
Don't walk away
How in the world
Can I wish for this?
Never to be torn apart
Close to you
'Till the last beat of my heart

At the close of day
The sunset cloaks
These words in shadowplay
Here and now, long and loud
My heart cries out

And the naked bone of an echo says
Don't walk away

Reach out your hands
I'm just a step away
How in the world
Can I wish for this?
Never to be torn apart
Close to you
'Till the last beat of my heart

How in the world
Can I wish for this?
Never to be torn apart
'Till the last beat
'Till the last fleeting beat of my heart

In the soil of out sadness
Hear our hearts bell a serenade
A faint choir tenderly shaping
A lament ... a hollow refuge
In the blood of the twinkling sky
Breathing in air drunk dry
There was once a time of rapture
All is lost ... a pale gleaming

Across this crooked land
Runs a crooked man
Our loved ones die
Under the hammer
Of the Soviet sun

Nothing can erase this night
But there's still light with you
Rhapsody ...
And if we can never see the sun
There's still light with you
Rhapsody ...

And I have seen all I want to
And I have felt all I want to
Rhapsody ...
But we can dream all we want to
We can dream all we want to