Siouxsie The Banshees

The undisputed queen of post-punk and goth rock, Siouxsie Sioux, is celebrated by her many accolytes on this superb album of covers! Features contributions from amazing new talents such as Kap Bambino, The KVB, Night Beats and R. Missing along with music veterans including a former Banshee Jon Klein who teams with PiL bassist Jah Wobble plus Xiu Xiu, Skold and lots more! This year, Sioux launched her first tour in 15 years, a comeback that has been incredibly well received all over the world and shows that her fanbase is still as active as ever!

Once Upon a Time: The Singles collects all ten of Siouxsie and the Banshees' A-sides spanning the years 1978-1981, with four songs otherwise unavailable on LP. It's a neat and accessible encapsulation of the group's early guitar-driven sound – a frosty, dissonant art punk that had a tremendous impact on the emerging goth rock scene. Unlike similarly forbidding work by such proto-goth contemporaries as Joy Division or the Cure, the early Banshees were tense and visceral; the darkness of the Once Upon a Time singles doesn't come from a sense of downcast gloom so much as it does from a jittery angst. Yet as challenging as the music is, it's also accessible enough for eight of these singles to have charted in the British Top 50. The melodies are angular and almost alien, yes, but oddly memorable once the listener has assimilated them. Starting shortly after the period covered by this collection, Siouxsie Sioux's icy detachment would be fused with an elegant romanticism and lusher, smoother arrangements. Which means that Once Upon a Time isn't the one, definitive Banshees compilation, but it is a cohesive and essential overview of the band's edgy, influential peak.