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Everything about Siouxsie Sioux has a
certain timelessness. Her music rings down through the years with a
biting authority and a passion that belongs to today as much as to any
other era. When she re-formed the Banshees last year with Budgie,
Steve Severin and former Psychedelic Furs guitarist Knox Chandler, it was
therefore a legitimate musical event, and not the 'greatest hits' parade
you might expect from most other reunions. You could always trust
the Banshees.
Siouxsie in her forties is a
revelation. With her black, spiky hair and an impossible
youthfulness glowing through the trademark make-up, she seems almost
unchanged, her Teutonic sexuality as striking as ever.
She has not mellowed with age.
Her vocals, forcefully insistent on 'Jigsaw Feeling' and 'Monitor',
gasping and wailing with a sinister 'Blue Jay Way', are proof of
that. Wiggling to the sleazy prowl of 'Red Light', and removing her
striped suit-jacket, shirt and tie in stages, until she is performing in
trousers and a bra that twinkles as brightly as the glitter on her
cheekbones and the sparkles along her eyelids, Siouxsie ends the night
drenched in sweat, her spikes collapsing damply as she crawls across the
stage on hands and knees.
The Banshees have lost none of their
dynamic intensity, and this is an intelligent and powerful set.
Opening with 'Pure', it takes in the appropriately harsh 'Metal Postcard'
(complete with German introduction), the unsettling 'Lullaby', and a
frivolous encore of 'Peek A Boo' performed with three dancing frogs from
the Japanese support band eX-Girl.
Rather more familiar are 'Happy
House' and 'Christine' - both exclusive to the DVD, which also includes
non-CD tracks 'Cities In Dust' and 'Spellbound'. The CD, however,
boasts its own exclusive with 'Trust In Me'.
Extras on the DVD enable you to
follow Budgie and the band around the backstage corridors as they prepare
for the show.
4/5
Carol Clerk
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