When you think about the world of down and dirty classic punk, you think of bands like The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Patti Smith, The Buzzcocks, The Cramps, The Slits, The Clash, Iggy and the Stooges and so on. You don't necessarily think of Siouxsie and the Banshees. Siouxsie Sioux is usually pegged as the dark princess of theatrical goth rock (with a fingernail constantly swirling in post-punk), a label with total and undeniable merit. That is, except for her very first record, The Scream.
Before Siouxsie and company started ordering black eye-shadow and high-volume hair products in bulk, they were part of the sweaty and exciting punk scene of mid-to-late '70s England. Most of Siouxsie and the Banshees' early output is extremely direct, rapid and snarling - there are only a few leanings into the crazed, garish twilight they would later come to embody. After breaking out with their hit single, "Hong Kong Garden", the band's early efforts would culminate on The Scream in 1978, a vividly ferocious debut album that personifies everything I've come to love about punk rock and NONE of what I hate about it.
For me, The Scream is more than just an album. The Scream is a tangible summation of the grit and irreverence that punk music had initially promised. It's all deep red madness with golden smoke around it. Listening to it unfold is like watching a hulking, feminine tiger stalk it's prey, gore it to pieces and then chew sumptuously on the entrails. The album opens with a primal chant ("Pure"), in which Siouxsie and her band mates exchange revelrous moans, overshadowed by a heavy and slowly recurring bass tone. The intentions have been made clear - you're entering the hunting grounds. The band kicks up immediately with "Jigsaw Feeling", a hot red set of needles that tear into the skull, all the while Siouxsie announcing an inevitable mental deterioration, "One day I'm feeling total/the next I'm split in two/my eyes are doing somersaults/staring at my shoes".
"Overground" maintains the animalistic nature of the album, but it's in a more measured, brooding fashion. The guitar stalks slow and alone in the intro, only joined by Siouxsie's shrill confidence and a booming set of tribal drums halfway into the song. It's followed up with an inverted cover of "Helter Skelter" by The Beatles, which completely obliterates the original in terms of pure satisfaction and delivery. The band's version emerges out of the darkness, scattered bass notes and guitar screeches giving way to ragged energy. Siouxsie infuses the cyclical lyrics with an obstinate charm, like she's toying with her prey. She adds a very well placed swear, in the line "You might be a lover, but you ain't no fucking dancer", which pretty much trademarks the song solely for the band at that point in time.
There's a welcoming give-and-take when it comes to tempo changes across the album. Each song is basically a refresher for the last, giving The Scream infinite propulsion - you could literally listen to it back to back to back to back and never really tire of the succinct punk contained within. "Metal Postcard", with it's deranged bird-call guitar slides and the jittering chords of "Nicotine Stain" are another great example of this slow-to-fast alternation. "Metal Postcard" provides the punch, while "Nicotine Stain" provides the vigor.
Of course, it's Siouxsie Sioux's proud and defiant style that pulls everything through the looking glass. Her cautionary tales, examinations of human nature and all-out celebrations of the depraved push the nocturnal punk of The Scream into the territory of "unforgettable". She has this way of weaving evocative lyrics without handing everything over in exposition, sliding her vocals up or down as they hang on particular words. Passages such as "By hook or by crook/you'll be the first in his book/for an impaled affair" and "out of the frying pan/and into the fire/58th variety" on "Carcass" paint the imminent doom of some unlucky victim with just enough vivid description for you to fill in the spaces. On "Mirage", Siouxsie sings about the flat, relatively meaningless existence of sexual spectacle, particularly on TV, "I'm just a vision on your TV screen/just something captured from a dream", moving on to acutely describe the controlling nature of the spectator, "my limbs are like palm trees/swaying in the breeze/my body's an oasis/to drink from as you please".
When all is said and done, I feel that The Scream is so ferociously definitive that I'm glad the band (and it's rotating roster of musicians) went on to explore other arenas of music. Siouxsie and the Banshees could easily have burned out by clinging to their punk roots and producing some tired, sub-par albums along the way. Instead, they chose to evolve. The band didn't have a perfect track record thereafter, but their whirlwind career produced several fantastic records. The Scream is one of those records, and in my opinion, their very best. You can't tame it's animal style, and really, who the fuck would want to?
