Time Capsule: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Juju

Every Saturday, Paste will be revisiting albums that came out before the magazine was founded in July 2002 and assessing its current cultural relevance. This week, we’re looking at Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Juju, a horror-filled, 1981 masterwork draped in a suspense that thrives on fantastical trips through the depths of post-punk’s darkest pits.

By 1981, Siouxsie and the Banshees had already made their mark in the post-punk mecca with their darker twist on the emerging rock sound. On their 1978 debut album The Scream, Siouxsie Sioux’s siren screech evoked a menacing quality all on its own. Paired with the jarring rhythms of John McKay and the unorthodox drum recording methods of Kenny Morris, you can see where the effortlessly unique quality of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ sound originated from. The Scream is the most traditionally punk-sounding record the group ever put out, and until Juju arrived three years later, it was their most affecting and intense release.

Throughout the many iterations of Siouxsie and the Banshees, particularly on the front end of their existence, the lead guitarist position was a rotating cast of everyone from a pre-Sex Pistols Sid Vicious to a post-Pornography Robert Smith, though the two most influential on the group were guitarists John McKay and John McGeoch. Following their debut, McKay and Morris stuck around for the band’s criminally unappreciated sophomore release, Join Hands, before departing and being replaced by ex-Slits/Big In Japan drummer Budgie and former Magazine guitarist John McGeoch. On Kaleidoscope, the Banshees shifted their sound with the incorporation of synthesizers and drum machines that would later get (mostly) abandoned for Juju.

Riding Kaleidoscope’s wave of critical success, which was their first collaboration with Grammy-nominated producer Nigel Gray—who produced for the Police on Outlandos d’Amour , Reggatta de Blanc and Zenyatta Mondatta—Siouxsie and the Banshees created their own mystical charm with Juju. It was a horror-filled masterwork draped in a suspense that thrives on fantastical trips through the depths of post-punk’s darkest pits. The record’s narrative unfolds with an urgency that demands attention, especially as it submerges you into a world of shadowy sexuality, eerie entities and thrilling tales.

Siouxsie and the Banshees have an uncanny ability to evoke sexiness via the unsettling, and Juju is their magnum opus of disquieting seduction. The record is a particularly creaky house of horrors, populated by a wailing woman dressed in all black wandering its halls with ominous screeches eking out from the guitar soundtrack, bathing the scene in delicious dread. The magical effect of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ fourth album is heavily due to their shift back to guitar-centric music, with John McGeoch’s unconventional six-string work front-and-center.

Juju is the defining release of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ sound, and a catalyst for a new culture in the British music scene. Though Siouxsie and the Banshees adamantly denied being just a “goth” band, with McGeoch going on record saying that a label like that “simplifies things too much.” “We were more thriller than horror movie, more Hitchcockian blood-dripping-on-a-daisy than putting fangs in something,” he continued. The band still helped spur the goth movement as much—if not more than—their gothic contemporaries, like Bauhaus, Joy Division and the Cure.

Juju beckons you in with the staccato opening of “Spellbound,” easily the most iconic Siouxsie and the Banshees tune, bewitching the senses with the intense instrumentation from McGeoch and Budgie—as they battle for dominance over the theatrical cries from Sioux. “Spellbound” is a song that I could argue is the blueprint for some of post-punk’s most dynamic experimentation, explored through the jangly rhythm from McGeoch’s shrill acoustic guitar work and the cavernous richness of Budgie’s percussion. Juju is an album hell-bent on flooding its own soundscape with tension and minimal release, so much so that’ll have you howling along with Sioux to expel the pent-up anxiety before you burst. Each track is brimming with intrigue; each element screams for your attention while exploding in enigmatic, uproarious harmony. “Into the Light” is a fuzzy electric shock of digital funk that is one of the only slight reprieves on the album. McGeoch reaches for a rarely used guitar effects device—the Gizmo—to deliver the track’s bizarre musicality. “Night Shift” is the other gulp for fresh air that slows down the intensity from the dual knockout power of Budgie and McGeoch, leaning into a sultry yet unnerving mood for a serial killer story.

Though the album tends to lean towards the eerie and metaphysical for inspiration, two of the tracks focus on the horrors of reality. “Arabian Knights” comments on the oppression of women in the Middle East as Sioux sings in a haunting cry, “Veiled behind screens / Kept as your baby machine.” It’s controversial in nature, as Sioux didn’t pull any punches when writing about the band’s perspective on the state of the Middle East (and it’s likely the only song of its time to have “orifices” in its lyrics and get radio play). Yet, the violent imagery confronts these ideas in an affectingly shocking manner. “Monitor” is a head-banging, unrelenting drumming feat from Budgie pounding, alongside the aerodynamic glide of McGeoch’s high-pitched guitar—which digs into the growth of humans as a spectacle of Orwellian paranoia, as Sioux cries about “look[ing] strangely at the screen, as if her pain was our fault, but that’s entertainment.”

“Halloween” has always been one of my favorite Siouxsie and the Banshees songs. It unabashedly leans into the kooky horror that Juju explores in a self-aware manner. The distorted shriek of McGeoch’s opening riff emits a haunting energy, and the incorporation of non-traditional percussion instrumentations like the vibraslap—descended from the African “jawbone”—crafted a unique sound minimally present in the British musical arsenal at the time. The Banshees’ interests in African instruments and inspiration for Juju’s title was spurred by Sioux and bassist Steven Severin’s trip to the Horniman Museum in London, where they discovered the African statue adorning the album’s cover.

“Sin In My Heart” is an anthemic ripper that plainly lays out a bleak perspective as Sioux chants: “Swift as a dart, sin in my heart.” She conjures even more morbid imagery in “Head Cut,” and the depth of Severin’s basslines descend the track into deeper murky territory. “Shrunken heads under the bed / The flies are humming / There’s a red under the bed / The spit is turning, roasting burning / Shadows dancing by the fire / Flickering flames laugh with desire / The head is the best part,” Sioux howls, evoking a scene straight out of Cannibal Holocaust—the vision is as disturbing as it is intriguing, a juxtaposition that Juju executes flawlessly.

With a verse that feels like the threat of a hex cast by Siouxsie herself, “Voodoo Dolly” concludes the album with a ghoulish grin—as she sings a tale of possession: “Now this little voodoo dolly / Has made you very lazy / You’re anemic from her sucking / And when you’re dead, she’ll find another.” McGeoch uses his guitar in a nearly formless manner, mimicking a wandering spirit that is driven only by its own whims. For an album whose songs maintain a staunch amount of individuality, the foreboding aura cast over the entirety of Juju makes it a surprisingly cohesive affair. As a defining post-punk release, it doesn’t get much darker than Siouxsie Sioux’s visceral imagery and the hypnotic instrumentation from Severin, McGeoch and Budgie. Juju is a swirling landscape of horror, brutal reality and jaw-dropping generic exploration.

Olivia Abercrombie is Paste‘s Associate Music Editor, reporting from Austin, Texas. To hear her chat more about her favorite music, gush about old horror films, or rant about Survivor, you can follow her on Twitter @o_abercrombie.