A review of JUJU by Mike Slaughter. - Siouxsie Sioux's MySpace Blog

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Siouxsie Sioux

Last Updated: 1/12/2010

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Gender: Female
Status: Married
Age: 100
Sign: Gemini

State: East
Country: UK
Signup Date: 11/12/2008

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[25 Jun 2009 | Thursday]

A review of JUJU by Mike Slaughter.
Category: Music

A review of JUJU by Mike Slaughter.

Peoples favourite albums normally comprise of the following things;

The album that came out at a memorable time in their life
The album that they have played the most
The album that they know all the words to
The album that even today, still sounds fantastic
The album that has tracks that are still played live years and years later on For me, JuJu has all these things.
The bands 4th album was released in the month of June 1981, 8 months after "Israel" had been released as a single. If "Israel" was the starter, this was a main course to be devoured with relish. It is rare for an album, even a favourite album to not have one bad track on it but JuJu manages to avoid that. For me, it came out at a time when I was in my last few months at school. The Clash, Pistols, The Damned and others were all on their way out of my friends and I's affection, SATB were definitely on the way up.

I had bought the first 3 albums as they came out and if Kaleidoscope had disappointed slightly (as 3rd albums so often do) in it's change of style and substance, JuJu brought them back to the very forefront of the scene and this, we decided unanimously was OUR band. My 3 friends and I saw them 4 times on the JuJu tour and I can still remember the backdrop opening cloud scene as the first track "Israel" was played at the Woolwich Odeon as if it was yesterday. Lunchtimes was spent playing JuJu on my tape recorder as the small punk element at school gathered around, it impressed the girls too so that was a bonus! The album starts of with Spellbound, an obvious choice for a single, a very upbeat track and a very popular track live. "Into the light" slows the pace down a bit before the pace returns with "Arabian Knights" a track that although popular, stands out far more today than it did amongst the classics released either side of it. If they didn't want the goth tag, they should of thought of that before naming their songs, this album features, spells, JuJu's, voodoos' and the next track, "Halloween", how could they be labelled anything other than "Goth"? "Halloween" features some great guitar work and plenty of whooping vocals and again was a very good live track.
Side 2 (see what I done there?) starts with one of my all time favourite tracks by any band, let alone this one, the vastly underrated "Monitor". That unmistakable intro, the swooping vocals and I love the way that the song stops half way through and then starts up again. "Nightshift" is another album track that could have easily been chosen as a single and once again, a very popular track live, with a powerful beat that is very easy to sing along to live and has the classic lines "fuck the mothers kill the others" and "a happy go lucky chap, always dressed in black" "Sin in my heart" saw Siouxsie donning her blue guitar and it saw the track start fast and get faster ending in a guitar crescendo.
"Headcut" is probably my least favourite track on the album and is probably more famous for being one side of the elusive fan club only release. It's quite punchy and jumpy and has her testing her vocal chords as she screams "it will look very nice" but it lacks a catchy chorus. "Voodoo dolly" is the perfect track to end with and once again a brilliant track live, arguably the track that improved more than any others on stage. Superb intense vocals, great twirling guitar work, pummelling bass line and pounding drums and it gets faster and louder and builds up to an orgasmic finale that see's the track end almost uncontrollably and then slows before the very last line is delivered. On the last ever Banshees tour, many tracks from this album were played and "Israel", although not being on this album, firmly belongs to this era and should have been placed on the JuJu remaster.

Siouxsie's solo tour also featured Spellbound, Nightshift and Arabian Knights as well as Israel Did they look better or sound better? For me, no. If I only take one image of Siouxsie with me it will be of her in her Israel t shirt, short skirt and boots with her jangles and bells on her wrists Does the album still sound great today? For me, yes, without a doubt? It wasn't the first album of theirs that I bought so it cannot be a favourite for sentimental reasons alone. If you recommend SATB to anyone and they only buy one studio album, make sure it's this one and they will be a fan for life.
reviewed by Mike"WoW" Slaughter 24th June 2009.

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