Siouxsie & the Banshees
A Kiss In The Dreamhouse

THE REVIEW

Let's start right away with what's positive in this shrill piece of work consisting of 9 songs where everything sounds very muffled, claustrophobic, from the rhythm to the guitars, from the synths to Sioux's voice, creating a unique atmosphere, with a strong sense of the past. The dark-punk of the beginnings seems now a distant memory, although the Dark somewhat remains while the Punk has definitively left giving way to melodies that in some cases are more pop and catchy.
The songs that are worth the ticket price are certainly "Cascade" and "Melt", the former is the one that sets the tone for the entire album leaving you with a dramatic inner nostalgia. This passage is beautiful:

"my breath melted my words
into strange alphabets
tormenting my tongue
pouting, shouting
oh love - like liquid falling
falling in cascades
oh love-lorn victims
laughing in cascades"

The latter is instead a true masterpiece, a testament of absolute skill, a slow song where the foreground voice combined with the opposing one creates a heavenly atmosphere. Then comes "Obsession" in order, a sort of sung funeral, or better yet spoken, where the notes are forgotten, and Sioux's voice, accompanied by shrill bass insertions and walls of synths, creates a hypnotic and funeral atmosphere. The same goes for "Circle", perhaps more hypnotic than the former, and on this wave, I would also include "Green Finger" with an additional melodic bass line very Joy Division.

Last but not least, the album's most negative part, although not in an absolute way, represented by the single "Slowdive" very seductive and useless even though it reminds of early New Order, by "Cocoon" with a Jazz-theatrical arrangement, and by "She's a Carnival" which is the only one of the three I save, a very pop-rock-wave song with a Saturday night dance-floor rhythm and a communion organ finale!
A sincere album, which acts as a bridge between two distinct periods of the band and deserves to be listened to. A piece of advice? Listen to it on very rainy days!