Siouxsie and the Banshees unlocked a cabinet of spellbinding pop curiosities on Tinderbox

Siouxsie and the Banshees have always defied simple categorization. Of course, that doesn’t mean critics and audiences haven’t tried to pin them down. “We were always lumped in with groups that called themselves ‘punk rock,’” frontwoman Siouxsie Sioux once explained. “But we’ve always been out on a limb and don’t adhere to being labeled with any movement or group.” While it’s true that Sioux and founding bassist Steven Severin first emerged in the London scene as part of the frenzy surrounding the Sex Pistols and the angry, rapid rise of punk rock in the mid-Seventies, they soon fled those suffocating confines to pursue a more expansive sound that the band would spend the next two decades chasing down and constantly reimagining. 

Part of the temptation to pigeonhole the Banshees no doubt stems from the outpouring of legendary artists who have cited them as influences. For instance, Joy Division’s Peter Hook credited the unusual interplay between John McKay’s guitar and Kenny Morris’ drumming on 1978 debut The Scream as inspiration. Likewise, The Smiths’ Johnny Marr has heaped praise on the melodic contributions of ex-Magazine guitarist John McGeoch across the band’s early Eighties output. Sioux, of course, has been famously dubbed the “Godmother of Goth” for her ravenly appearance, dark fashions, and stark, chilling voice. It’s not unreasonable then to think of the Banshees as post-punk, dark wave, or even on the forefront of alternative rock, though such labels not only feel reductive but fail to keep pace with the group’s mercurial catalog. “With every album, we try to get that record out of our system,” Sioux once told MTV. “We don’t ever want to do a part one, part two, part three of any one thing.” 

By 1985, the enduring Banshees core of Sioux, Severin, and drummer Budgie had long outgrown the band’s abrasive, discordant post-punk roots. John Valentine Carruthers, the latest in a growing lineage of guitarists, had replaced The Cure’s Robert Smith following 1984’s more psychedelic Hyaena and retreated with the Banshees to Berlin’s famed Hansa by the Wall studios to record what would become 1986’s Tinderbox. The album’s title, an antiquated metaphor for a dangerous, explosive situation, reflected Sioux’s feelings about the times and felt all the more fitting given the Berlin Wall looming just outside the studios. Likewise, the famous, red-tinted photo reproduced for the record’s album cover looks more like a crooked, demonic finger protruding from the skies than a tornado arbitrarily making landfall. It all sets a distinct and disturbing tone for Tinderbox, an expansive, atmospheric album that portends a brewing storm even as it urges listeners to bop their heads and embrace the curious beauty around them. 

Listeners need look no further than Tinderbox’s singles to feel that peculiar tension between infectious pop and doomsday peril. Volcanic dance-rock hit “Cities in Dust” begins with its iconic drips and pooling water before erupting into a molten groove ready to burn down every disco between here and Pompeii. Inspired by an excursion to the ruins of that tragic city, Sioux imagines the moments before the disaster as a reminder of how quickly life can return to ashes and dust. Opening track and second single “Candyman” bursts with driving, jangly guitars and playful cadences (e.g., the hard ‘C’ stutter on the choruses) that initially belie the danger Sioux relates. Our skin only begins to crawl as we realize that this man with a “syrup tongue,” “gelatin saliva,” and a “guillotine smile” preys upon the most innocent and vulnerable among us. “With their guilt and shame / They think they’re to blame,” laments Sioux, who, as an abuse survivor herself, understands the traumatic aftermath of a candyman’s betrayal. It makes the distant schoolyard “na-nana-na”s at the song’s end one of the more haunting and disturbing moments of the Banshees’ entire catalog. 

However, it’s the other pair of tracks on Tinderbox’s side one that truly reveal just how bold and majestic this iteration of the Banshees was as songwriters and recording artists. Sioux hovers overhead like a phantom as Budgie and Severin wade into the crisp, spinning guitar of Carruthers on “Sweetest Chill,” a song about feeling the presence of a departed loved one. The bandmates create a flowing, textured tapestry together, mysterious in its subtle shifts and capable of absorbing all the vocal nuances Sioux brings to this seance. Like several instances on Tinderbox, “Sweetest Chill” was composed and sequenced to pass the cloak to “This Unrest” without snapping listeners out of the Banshees’ spell. The latter quietly wafts in on keys and percussion before unfurling into a grinding, internal tug-of-war. “This unrest crucifies my chest,” Sioux declares, her voice landing like a blunt object capable of caving in the back of a skull. By the time this tormented, psychological wrecking ball slouches towards her concluding urges to “clean away,” listeners will be all too ready to plunge into the cleansing waters on tap in Pompeii. 

Sioux has acknowledged her surprise that Tinderbox connects with people through seemingly unrelatable topics. As Severin once put it, “We’re just interested in a lot that life has to offer.” Side two of Tinderbox consequently leans into the peculiarities of human nature as a spark for several songs. Budgie’s drums act as both rolling thunder and friendly fire on “Cannons” as Sioux pulls from history to tell the tale of drought and a town’s primitive notion to seed the clouds with artillery. “92°” samples dialogue from the 1953 horror film It Came from Outer Space discussing the violent anthropological phenomenon that blood begins to boil and the frontal lobe starts to smoke at “not 91 or 93 / But 92 Fahrenheit degrees.” Like “Cannons” before it, oddball facts and curiosities might not be enough to carry a song like “92°” if not for Sioux’s ability to make our palms sweat as the mercury in a thermometer climbs toward that most deadly of temperatures. Nowhere on Tinderbox do the Banshees feel as aggressive as they do in this pressure cooker, and yet nothing of the album’s majestic atmosphere feels in any way compromised as they find imaginative ways to capture the rising action.     

Should we be fortunate enough to survive the predators, natural disasters, and inner turmoil across Tinderbox that threaten our happiness and well-being, “Party’s Fall” suggests that loneliness likely awaits us. Our tailfeathers shake along to layers of glistening guitars as Sioux details our inevitable falling-out with the celebrations and hollow social rituals that currently dominate our lives. “We’ll have a party on our own,” she promises us, a small consolation for having finally grown up or at least aged out. On sprawling closer “Lands End,” Sioux’s crystal ball casts its gaze “forever and eternally” toward “the cliffs around the clashing sea.” In 1985, four young pupils on an adventure holiday at Land’s End in Cornwall, England, were swept out to sea and drowned. Here, Sioux sings more in the breath of a lover’s leap, an act intended to bond two people for all eternity through a shared watery grave. “Take a walk with me down by the sea,” she lures as the song crashes to a close. It’s only a bit of dark romance; however, as listeners preparing to leave the perilous world of Tinderbox, we can’t help but wonder just how many others might consider that plunge.

As Siouxsie and the Banshees’ fans already know, the band’s B-sides, though sometimes cast aside, are rarely rubbish. The kindling left over from Tinderbox can definitely start a blaze of its own. Partial instrumentals “An Execution” and “Umbrella” run on higher octanes of nightmare fuel than anything on the album proper, each a serviceable answer to what might be heard should Soviet scientists actually drill into the caverns of Hell. Fellow instrumental “The Quarterdrawing of the Dog” bursts forth like a curious, transcendent mystery that will sadly never be solved. While it seems a dramatic shame to waste a Severin lyric like “sharpening the blades of murderous delight,” the demoed “Starcrossed Lovers” never quite finds the breath of life in its “kiss of revenge.” However, we can imagine a spot on Tinderbox for the romantic abandon of this early version of “Song from the Edge of the World,” as well as a pillow to lay our heads upon as “Lullaby” watches over us through the night like a vigilant candle.

Tinderbox would find Siouxsie and the Banshees burning brighter than ever before in the States as “Cities in Dust” climbed the US dance charts. Carruthers would soon depart after the group’s ho-hum 1987 covers album, Through the Looking Glass, and guitarist Jon Klein and multi-instrumentalist Martin McCarrick would come aboard to help steer the band through their most successful commercial period across the pond, including a second headlining slot on 1991’s inaugural Lollapalooza tour. While some might look back at Tinderbox as a mere bridge between the John McGeoch era of the Banshees and 1988’s Peepshow’s plunge into alternative rock, the record does far more than simply occupy liminal space. Tinderbox claims a realm all its own—a majestic, cautionary collection of songs and outtakes full of darkness and peril but also a glowing desire to understand and, above all, endure. It’s yet another one of those moments that defies simple categorization. Perhaps Sioux has described Tinderbox as well as anyone: “It just sounds like Siouxsie and the Banshees.” 

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