| This more selective Best Of collection effectively supplants the previous and more comprehensive singles compilations Once Upon a Time and Twice Upon a Time, and is a salient reminder that before the advent of Siouxsie and the Banshees there was a time when words such as "Goth" and "Gothic" only really meant anything to experts in the fields of Dark Age Germanic tribal societies and medieval arch construction. Siouxsie Sioux--Gothic rock's truest innovator, pin-up and understandably reluctant Godmother--changed all that to the point where it's now impossible to hear the G-word without thinking of generously-hirsute young people who wear black lipstick, burn candles and keep crows as pets in dimly lit, cobwebbed bedsits. However, the public rarely fails to spot an intelligent idea and a memorable tune--even one wrapped up in shimmering morosity, dry ice and flanged guitars--and despite subject matter as distinctly non-Top of the Pops as schizophrenia (the frisky "Christine"), buggery (the compelling, tom-tom and bass throb of "Arabian Knights") and the civilisation-smothering eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 ("Cities in Dust"), the Banshees enjoyed laudably healthy chart statistics, particularly when it came to their arguably more cultivated cover of the Beatles' "Dear Prudence" in 1983. All this, of course, is proof that the Banshees' appeal extended far beyond the demarcations of punk parochialism. Siouxsie herself once stated that the Banshees were a "thorn in the side of mediocrity". Perhaps this compilation will prick the consciences of anyone who's carelessly forgotten all about them. --Kevin Maidment |
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