Siouxsie And The Banshees
Kaleidoscope

THE REVIEW

There are multiple souls coexisting in "Kaleidoscope", the third album by Siouxsie and the Banshees, and there are even twenty-two personalities inhabiting Christine, the schizophrenic girl, who really existed and to whom the eponymous song is dedicated, the second single from the record. In the first one, "Happy House", behind the respectable facade of a happy house lies a mental asylum ("We are happy here, in the happy house / we forget ourselves, we pretend everything is fine / there is no hell").

The theme of madness silently creeps through this album. For Siouxsie, the '80s open with a new season: the post-punk era for her is already over, but the restlessness has not passed. Meanwhile, a lineup change from the first two works should be noted: alongside the faithful Steven Severin, John McGeoch joins on guitar and Budgie on drums. The new direction is felt, with the introduction of electronics and more refined sounds in nocturnal, mysterious tracks like "Tenant", "Lunar Camel", or the splendid and Arabic-tinged "Desert Kisses". The stylistic remnants of punk are present instead in the more upbeat tracks, with McGeoch's sharp guitar in the foreground, in "Trophy", "Hybrid", or in the closing "Skin".

The sound effect of a camera click in "Red Light" is curious, where photographic technique terms are the metaphor for a romantic encounter ("She has a professional look in the frame / but the polaroids burn upon seeing the subject / too much exposure / as the emulsion drips down / the diaphragm closes").

Finally, the cover is beautiful, with three dots of red, green, and blue that, when combined, result in white, which forms the title of the album. Susan is curled up on the ground, wearing white pants and a shirt streaked with color. It’s full of light outside, but the interior is in shadows. In this dialectic, which is reflected in the sounds, between black and white, light and shadow, color and monochrome, "Kaleidoscope" moves, an album that was Siouxsie's best-selling success, reaching number 5 on the UK charts in 1980.