31 years Divine Rapture | Celebrating The Siouxsie and the Banshees 1995 and final album!
Today, 31 years ago Siouxsie and the Banshees released their eleventh and final studio album in the majestically divine “The Rapture”. This is a erotic-beast created over a year and a half with the Velvet Underground’s John Cale producing and mixing all but three tracks.
This however was not the dark-gothic masterpiece which people thought would close the career of those who forged that very path, instead it contains some of the more lighter elements in The Banshees work.
A natural progression is heard from their acclaimed 1991 offering “Superstition”.
It continues with the same flowing themes, Siouxsie Sioux as the confident, scorned femme-fatale, a chanteuse and not just a punk revolutionary, Sioux moved forward along with the sound built behind her.
From the start and throughout the twelve-track song cycle there is an experimentation, the title track itself is an eleven-minute journey that twists and turns through a haunting atmosphere like a wounded animal.
Along with “The Rapture” another gem to behold is the magnificent and melodic “Stargazer”, a very unnerving though accessible sound breaks through. The pleasures of “Sick Child” and the sublime “The Double Life” make up for any lack of dark joy an often criticism of “The Rapture”.
The last studio hurrah from Siouxsie And The Banshees is definitely worth a revisit, granted it is not cut from the same menacing cloth as “Juju” or “Peepshow”, nonetheless it is a staggeringly beautiful piece of work which shows great passion and depth, displaying Siouxsie Sioux as a singer and not just a screamer.
The Rapture, verse
“Wondering if I dare to say your name
Wondrous thoughts embalmed avow you came
By the crescent disc rising amethyst
How can love remain the same unchanged?
Moonlight plays upon this sunken brow
Midnight ink bleeds wet mercurial clouds
By the crescent disc rising amethyst
Somnambulist unharnessed storms the plow
By the crescent disc rising amethyst
How can love remain the same unchained?”.
The Rapture (Original 1995 Track List)
01. “O Baby”
02. “Tearing Apart”
03. “Stargazer”
04. “Fall from Grace”
05. “Not Forgotten”
06. “Sick Child”
07. “The Lonely One”
08. “Falling Down”
09. “Forever*”
10. “The Rapture”
11. “The Double Life”
12. “Love Out Me”
[Kevin Burke]
