June
6th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Siouxsie & The
Banshees’ Juju LP, issued on this day in 1981. It was their fourth
studio album, overall, and their second of a trilogy of albums they’d
release while constituted in their “MK II” configuration of Siouxsie
Sioux, Steven Severin, Budgie & John McGeoch. It is perhaps the
best of this trio of brilliant albums.
While the prior album,
Kaleidoscope, deliberately worked towards differentiating each song from
the others with no consideration for how they’d be performed live, and
the subsequent album, A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, delved into psychedelic,
orchestrated arrangements, Juju was conceived primarily through live
performance. A result of this process was that the record organically
manifested as a sort of concept album, delving into themes of darkness
and subversion that created a common thread through each of its nine
compositions.
Musically, Juju represents guitarist John McGeoch
at his most inspired and experimental. After his somewhat tentative
participation in Kaleidoscope, due to his still being a member of
Magazine, Juju found him now fully ensconced in The Banshees where his
presence infused and informed the album. As a post punk manifesto, his
guitar work rivals that of Keith Levene in PiL in terms of innovation
while offering up a much more melodically driven wall of sound. It’s no
surprise that John Lydon would eventually recruit him to fill Keith’s
shoes after his ouster. Vocally, Siouxsie achieved a warmth and depth
to her voice that were a step above anything she’d accomplished before
and her tone was duly enriched by the lyrical intensity she brought to
each song. The album jars and stuns with striking imagery in song after
song. “Ripped out sheep’s eyes. No forks or knives” or “Don’t forget
when your elders forget to say their prayers, take them by the legs and
throw them down the stairs” are just a couple of examples of verses that
reach out of the density of the music and wrench the listener into the
darkness of the album’s concepts. This is real “shock and awe” song
craft.
But don’t undervalue the contributions of the powerhouse
rhythm section provided by Budgie and Severin. They deliver a churning
tribal shudder that provides a whirling yet unshakable foundation upon
which McGeoch can embellish with his guitars and Sioux can swoop and
dive through with her voice. Indeed, the interplay of the quartet is
entirely seamless through every song and I’m certain this is largely the
result of the compositional process and their being worked out in live
settings before being brought into the studio for their commitment to
recording tape. The resulting tapestries of sounds are so tightly woven
that there’s really no separating them out into discrete components.
This
era of Siouxsie & The Banshees was arguably the peak of the band’s
prowess while this lineup persisted. Sadly, McGeoch’s struggles with
alcoholism would result in him being fired from the band after touring
for Dreamhouse and the group was never quite as influential again. The
music they made during their first two incarnations (1978-1979,
1980-1982) would offer up sounds and styles that would influence
generations to come in terms of post-punk, Goth and a variety of other
branches of the alternative music tree. Personally, Juju and the other
two albums made by this lineup represent the definitive set of essential
recordings by a band that came out of the original London Punk scene
and then were one of the first to go beyond its simplistic nihilism and
shine a light through the darkness into places where new sounds could be
found.
