426. Siouxsie And The Banshees - The Scream (1978)
















Track Listing

1. Pure
2. Jigsaw Feeling
3. Overground
4. Carcass
5. Helter Skelter
6. Mirage
7. Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)
8. Nicotine Stain
9. Suburban Relapse
10. Switch

Review

And so Goth rears its head with a great, great album. I should make a disclaimer right now that we are starting this phase in the list that I am a huge sucker for all gothy post-punk like Siouxsie, Bauhaus, Joy Division and Echo and The Bunnymen. That said this is a brilliant album.

When this came out Siouxsie were already quite well known for their UK top ten single Hong Kong Gardens, which is not here in the album unfortunately. But the album, although never as effusive as that single lives up to it.

This is proper post-punk, the attitude is too gloomy for punk, the playing is too competent relaying on rhythm more than on noisy guitars and the whole thing just shines with a much more slick decadence than the "filth and the fury" of stuff like the Sex Pistols.

This slicker decadence makes the music infinitely more interesting in my humble opinion, I am all for punk but it really lack sophistication. The ambience here is dark but slick and beautiful. Even the cover of Helter Skelter manages to be more disturbing than the original. But then there are glimmers of light like in Carcass, which doesn't really sound like the title for the lightest song in the album, but so it is.

Beautiful, stunning, stomping darkness.

Track Highlights

1. Carcass
2. Mirage
3. Switch
4. Helter Skelter

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The Scream was reissued in the UK 27 October, 2005 (28 October in the USA) as part of Universal's Deluxe Edition series. The new edition featured a remastered version of the album on the first disc, while the second disc contained demo and live tracks together with the singles from that period. The single disc edition of the 2006 remaster has noticeable digital distortion, and this is heard on the track "Jigsaw Feeling".

The razor-sharp, slashing strings of Bernard Herrmann's score to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho particularly inspired the band for the music of "Suburban Relapse", where the guitars echo the knife-screeching violins of the famous shower scene.

* The Scream is one Morrissey-composer Boz Boorer's top seven "desert island albums".

* "Mirage" is also one of Morrissey's favorite songs: he featured it as part of his introduction tape on his Your Arsenal tour in 1992.

Helter Skelter: