Listen to Punk Rock! Exploring a Musical Genre by Pulliam June Michele;

Author:Pulliam, June Michele;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO, LLC
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES: THE SCREAM

Siouxsie and the Banshees’ sophomore album, The Scream (1978), exemplifies how the band was “helping establish the language of post-punk” while “punk was being formed” (Phillips 2018). The London band’s earliest music is a gothic, avant garde expression of punk that was as influenced by the Talking Heads as it was the Sex Pistols, the group that Siouxsie Sioux (Susan Dallion) and her Banshees’ bandmate Steven Severin (Steven Bailey) credit with introducing them to punk in 1975. Sioux and Severin were part of the Bromley Contingent, a term coined by music journalist Caroline Coon to describe the uniquely dressed fans of the Sex Pistols who followed the band from town to town. It was in this capacity that Sioux and Severin were involved with the infamous episode on Bill Grundy’s Today show in December of 1976, when Sex Pistols’ guitarist Steve Jones called the host a “dirty bastard” and a “fucking rotter” on live television after Grundy suggested an illicit rendezvous with Sioux after the show (Bennett 2016; “Transcript” 2004).

In 1976, Sioux and Severin decided to form Siouxsie and the Banshees, and they soon got their chance to play at a London punk festival sponsored by punk impresario Malcolm McLaren. Sioux became “as well known for her style as her voice” (Gregory 2017), with her dramatic eye makeup, “fetish clothing and fishnet, peek-a-boo shiny plastic bras, spiky stilettos, rubber stockings and swastika armbands” that made her a sort of “female Sex Pistol” (Punk77 n.d., “Siouxsie”). Sioux’s sartorial intent was not to objectify herself but, rather, “to show that erogenous zones are over rated” and that breasts “are no big deal” (Punk77 n.d., “Siouxsie”). As part of the first coterie of London punk bands, she was instrumental in the development of the punk image. The Banshees’ music reflected both “the chaos and grime of the city” but also found “the cold emptiness of the suburbs” (Phillips 2018). Sioux’s fearsome atonal vocal pronouncements accompanied by a throbbing bass line and sharply ascending guitar notes characterize the tracks on The Scream.

The Banshees’ second studio album, The Scream, was a seminal moment in punk and “marked the kick-off point for British post-punk, paving the way for everyone from Joy Division to Savages” (Phillips 2018), with music that was “angular, claustrophobic and goth before there was such a thing” (Gregory 2017). Most of the songs on The Scream were written by Banshees’ guitarist John McKay, and the album’s title is derived from Edvard Munch’s painting of the same name. But the most notable feature of The Scream is Sioux’s voice: she pierces listeners’ hearts with her high notes, which pull “everyone into the future” (Gregory 2017). Rolling Stone’s Kurt Loder compared Sioux to a young Grace Slick (1979).

The Scream’s opening track, “Pure,” is not so much a song as it is a wordless sample of the Banshees’ sound: a throbbing bass, a high-pitched guitar, and Sioux’s scream-cum-yodel vocalizations. “Jigsaw Feeling” sonically illustrates the experience of alienation, feeling “total” one day and “split in two” on the next.

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