The Rapture

Siouxsie And The Banshees: “The Rapture” (Polydor)

It would be recommendation enough to tell you that five of the dozen songs on The Rapture are produced by the legendary Welshman, Mr John Cale.

What might surprise you, though, given the latter’s penchant for making gloriously brilliant, doggedly uncommercial and often downright bleak music, is that these tunes on Siouxsie Sioux’s disc are the poppiest and lightest of a selection that trumpets, in a new, invigoratingly uncluttered fashion, The Banshees’ perennial obsession with the perverse side of that vague and individual mysticism which Ms Siouxsie has made uniquely her own trademark down through the years.

The two opening numbers, the enchanting single ‘O Baby’ and the alluring ‘Tearing Apart’, are two of those fizzy arias on which Mr Cale takes the controls. They sound sincerely vital and fresh, brimful of energy. Furthermore, Siouxsie’s lyrics are more straightforward and recognisably humanistic nowadays. ‘Forever’, another Cale engineered mini-classic may be as oblique and mysterious as Siouxsie once always was but it also happens to be blessed with a beautifully circuitous and catchy melody. This is the kind of heavenly effortless popness that the likes of St Etienne would give Sarah Cracknell away for.

The title track, ‘The Rapture’, is the epic. (In the old days there was always at least one epic on a Siouxsie And The Banshees record!) Probably because it has so many classical music undertones, it’s reminiscent of Kate Bush’s ambition as much as Siouxsie’s own untamed vocal aspiration. The most telling thing you can say of any rock composition that last over eleven minutes is that it justifies its duration, and ‘The Rapture’ easily does that, never once sacrificing the necessary urgency and vitality required to sustain your keenest attention in this era of the drastically curtailed attention span.

On the truly blacker and musically harder ditties such as ‘The Double Life’ and ‘Love Out Me’ there is a sense in which the guitar is further back in the mix than in days of yore but it’s not an incongruous tactic. Rather, it’s in keeping with the guise of The Rapture as a genuine disc of pop bliss.

The Rapture dismisses any ideas that The Banshees are just a burnt out icon of post-punk indulgence. On the contrary, apart from being hugely entertaining, it repositions Siouxsie Sioux as one of the most enigmatic and engaging chanteuses of her generation.

Make no mistake Siouxsie, the consummate stylist, still has all the style in the world. Like the re-visitation of a seductive ghost The Rapture is a triumphant return for the mistress of the twilight zone.

• Patrick Brennan