In between “The Scream” and here Siouxsie and Steve Severin (they being the core of The Banshees) had lost half a band (Kenny Morris and John McKay), picked up a temporary guitar player (Robert Smith) a drummer of fearsome prowess (Budgie) and hired a guitar player whose name should be celebrated as one of the greats of our era, I do, of course, mean the great John McGeogh. There had also been 2 more albums “Join Hands” and “Kaleidoscope”.

By the time we reach this point and “Ju Ju” the line up of Sioux, Severin, McGeogh and Budgie were on their 2nd album together. What you need to know about this record is that McGeogh and Budgie are on another plane of musicianship here. The skill, inventiveness and sheer power in their playing is breathtaking.

I can’t dissect too much what drummers do except to say that what Budgie does on this album ain’t like anything I’d heard any drummer do before. As for McGeogh…well you can take all your guitar players of any stripe, Blues bores (I’m looking at you Claptout), metal fretwanking speed merchants, all of them, McGeogh’s playing on this album is simply one of the greatest guitar performances ever committed to tape.

There are 2 killer singles inside the first 3 tracks (“Spellbound” and “Arabian Nights”) and on songs like “Monitor”, “Sin In My Heart” and “Halloween” McGeogh and Budgie drive this album along helping take Siouxsie to places she’d never reached before.

Every kid wanting to play drums or guitar should listen to this album so they know there is an alternative to the written in stone “guitar gods” and that drumming went elsewhere after Bonham etc. And if you have never heard this album, what are you doing reading this ? Go grab a copy…NOW!

Monitor - https://youtu.be/0sMC3qugQPM

Imagine, if you would, that there is a somewhat controversial band out there. They are being regularly written about and feted by the music press but they are as yet unsigned to any record label. The only way you could get to hear them would be to go to one of their (mainly) London based club gigs or, and let this sink in once you’ve read it, by listening to Radio One !

For that is the position those of us not old enough to schlep down to London to see them found ourselves in, the only way we could hear Siouxsie & The Banshees in 1977 was by listening to the sessions they were recording for John Peel’s late night Radio One show. Could you imagine Radio One even considering that idea now ? John Peel even lobbied to get BBC Records (home of the themes to Dr Who, Grandstand, Goon Show classics and those sound effects albums to which The Jam paid homage with “Sound Affects”) to sign them. So when they finally did get scooped up by Polydor and released “The Scream” in 1978 it was a pretty big deal.

The album was preceded by the single “Hong Kong Garden” which was something of an impressive debut. But the album was another thing altogether. The Banshees had been together and gigging now for 2 years. Knowing what I know now the band had used those 2 years to get better, write new songs and these were what they wanted the world to hear, not just stuff from 2 years ago. So while the songs from the Peel sessions were here (Overground, Carcass, Suburban Relapse, Mirage and Metal Postcard) there were newer, more intricate songs that were a step on from those. 

Strangely the album opens in a similar fashion to “The B-52’s” kinda fading in with non-vocal female voice(s) in an almost operatic style. Then we are hurled into the thundering “Jigsaw Feeling” a real tour de force of a song to open with. In between here and the end we get the Peel session favourites, a spiky cover of The Beatles, the albums one low point “Nicotine Stain” and then there is the closing, almost 7 minutes long (sacrilege in Punk-dom) “Switch”. It starts slow, it speeds up it jumps around in tempo and style and never does it feel like it is 7 minutes long. This band hand spent 2 years we’ll, moved on from the Punk maelstrom and were going to very interesting places (to be continued…)

As you may no doubt have noted they have dropped the “III” designation in Lee Bains name, no idea why, they just have. 

I read an interview with Lee Bains last year where he told how he was being interviewed by some students in Sweden when he was asked, as you obviously have so much to say why do you make it so difficult to hear it ? Something I’ve mentioned about their previous 3 albums and a question that made him think. Over the next months while racking up the miles in their van between gigs the band talked about their next album and the need for a cleaner sound and to make sure their message was better heard.

The result of all that soul searching was them hiring producer David Barbe (Drive-By Truckers, Sugar, REM), deconstructing their new songs and putting them back together as this, “Old-Time Folks”, one of my top 5 albums of 2022.

At last you can hear what Lee Bains is singing, the album as a whole is more like their first, more Americana and a little less Punk fire but it suffers not at all from that. This album is all about the songs and the message and letting the former breathe in order to get the latter across.

New ideas here include pianos, an orchestra, female backing vocals, OK nothing “new” but new to the Glory Fires. David Barbe has cooked a sound that makes the song the centre but retains that live feel about it.

Highlights include the bookending “Old-Time Folks” (Invocation) and (Benediction), “The Battle Of Atlanta”, “(In Remembrance Of) The 40 Hour Week”, “Gentlemen”, “Rednecks”…oh c’mon it’s all good. If you have any appreciation of the style now known as Americana just go and buy this album, I promise you you’ll love it. We’re going to see Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires (the III has reappeared on the tour poster, no idea why, it just has) in Sheffield in April, my friend Paul Cookson who first introduced me to them will be there too and I cannnot wait.

(In Remembrance Of) The 40 Hour Week - https://youtu.be/7C0TjzLBtn8