Oh, save us from ‘comeback’ albums! The potential to feel embarrassed on an ageing icon’s behalf can be powerful enough to make us want to hide behind the couch with ears half-covered, cowering from a croaked attempt to reanimate the ghost of music past. And this will make us sad. But this isn’t a problem with Mantaray: it need not be called a comeback album, and anyway, Siouxsie Sioux is more concerned about making music than she is about being forgotten. And for this we’ll always remember her. How very her indeed.
Whiffs of the Banshees mingle with influences more modern and more ancient, all of which are inimitably Siouxsie: still showy, bolshy, and most of all, passionate. The album has its weaknesses, and the threat of sinking into self-indulgent PJ Harvey territory is occasionally evident, especially in the first two tracks, ‘Into a Swan’ and ‘About to Happen’, but Siouxsie the stonking vixen, the chanteuse, kicks in with ‘Here Comes That Day’. One Mile Below’ is almost primeval, ‘They Follow You’ is a pretty killer pop tune, and the playful drama of ‘Drone Zone’ all add up to an album that, while it might not sparkle from beginning to end, is anything but boring.
She hasn’t reinvented herself, she just simply never stopped being Siouxsie, and after thirty years she’s still twice as interesting as three people half her age.