Cities In Dust is a retelling of the fate of Pompeii, fire and ash, the eruption of Vesuvius and the fate of the victims caught in the firestorm. It has one of their greatest pop hits, which still sounds amazing even now. For me, Tinderbox was the album that pulled me into their strangely scary yet ultimately beautiful world. The Banshees were always several steps ahead of everyone else and never get half the credit they’re due. Many bands struggled to find themselves after punk. It hints at turmoil and atmosphere and the inexorable pull of something unfathomable. The cover art shows a hurricane like the one that scooped Dorothy out of Kansas. Tinderbox is a collection of evil fairy tales as told by Siouxsie Sioux to the most luscious music served up in the post-punk era. Budgie’s drums sound so mighty you can feel them in your tympanic membrane. Steven Severin knew what he was doing with the lyrics and electronics. Siouxsie, meanwhile, was channeling some of the most confident vocals of her career. Old members were gone, a new guitarist had arrived in the form of John Valentine Carruthers. Tinderbox is the seventh studio album of a band in a state of change. Both Juju and Peepshow has held the honour. Kaleidoscope might get in there and refuse to leave. Other nights I’ll swear Hyena is their masterpiece. Sometimes A Kiss In The Dreamhouse is my favourite. For me, there’s also no such thing as a best Banshees album – at least one I can really hold onto, because I keep changing my opinion.
But The Banshees were so punk they refused to be categorised, all but inventing and then discarding goth once everyone else turned it into a uniform.
Even their weakest record (that would be Join Hands) is still challenging and exciting, like all punk worth it’s spit should be. There is no such thing as a bad Banshees album. His main passion will always be The Stranglers, but in amongst the pile, I found something Tinderbox by Siouxsie And The Banshees, back then unknown to me, now one of my absolutely life-defining favourite forces in music ever. Each time I raided his music stack, I found something else he bought at Bruce’s Record Shop in Glasgow. My father (mum’s boyfriend of thirty years) was into post-punk and gloomy 80s bands, so his collection of records and CDs became moments of value. As a teenager in search of a perspective grander than what I saw outside the window of a council house in Cumbernauld, I’d find myself turning to music and books to give me something that wasn’t there, that I felt was missing. Sometimes, that new music came from old bands long since gone.
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