Thursday, June 22, 2017

Review: 'Silhouettes and Statues: A Gothic Revolution 1978- 86'


Goth was a distinctively eighties movement, pushing its furrowed brow against the gleeful superficiality of Duran Duran or Animotion in the same way the definitively-nineties grungesters bucked the hair metalists in the next decade. Despite that, you could probably trace Goth back to the sixties with Procol Harum and Nico, and if you want to get cute, a lot further back than that to the Gregorian chanters. But if Goth ain’t one thing, it’s cute, and Cherry Red’s new box set Silhouettes and Statues: A Gothic Revolution 1978- 86 provides five discs of proof.

Goth never caught on as a mainstream-newsworthy item the way grunge did, so it only produced a few couple of superstars, namely The Cure and Siouxsie Sioux, and because everyone did not get the chance to burn out on Goth as they did on grunge, Goth had much longer, spidery legs. Consequently, there was so much to choose from in compiling Silhouettes and Statues that key artists such as Siouxsie, Killing Joke, and Christian Death could be sidelined in favor of a slew of more obscure artists.

There are gradations in this set’s overwhelming grey. While I might not go so far as to call them poppy, tracks such as Joy Division’s “Shadowplay”, Southern Death Cult’s “Moya”, Zero Le Creche’s “Last Year’s Wife”, Cocteau Twins’ “In Our Angelhood”, Balaam and the Angels’ “The Darklands”, The Damned’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, All About Eve’s “D Is for Desire” (which takes some of the sting out of the absence of the movement’s definitive diva, Siouxsie Sioux), and quite a few others are as accessible as the best of the legit New Wavers who never shot a video on a yacht. There are also alluringly spooky numbers from Dead Can Dance, Bushido, Adam & the Ants, and original Goth maestro Nico, while toothy tracks by Actifed, UK Decay, Penetration, and Flesh for Lulu straddle the line between Goth and punk invigoratingly.

Silhouettes and Statues most certainly does not play it safe, though, and excessively abrasive or otherwise difficult tracks by The Birthday Party, Portion Control, Schliemer K, In the Nursery, Bone Orchard, Part 1, and nine-and-a-half minutes of Anorexic Dread will wash away the less dedicated like a gloomy, doomy tsunami. Of course playing it safe is not very Goth, while washing stuff away like a gloomy, doomy tsunami is, so anyone who still sprays their black locks up like a starfish and slathers on the pancake makeup will delight in Silhouettes and Statues. Well, maybe “delight” is the wrong word, but you get the picture.
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