Siouxsie Sioux's voice...

"The Pasadena fire department broke in. I was trying to tell them it’s part of our fucking light show"

In the end, we did the sensible thing: we sold our tickets for The Cure and saw Siouxsie instead. This wasn't a difficult decision (Cruel World is <15 minutes away from home) even with the mad chaos of ticket exchanging happening on Reddit and FB... I almost got passes from someone who was in a plane headed back to Chicago, but here's a Pasadena pro-tip: go to the western end of Washington Blvd., turn left on Arroyo, go two blocks and park where you can. The bluff you're on overlooks Brookside Park with a clear view directly to the main stage. It's not close but you're not that far away. I first saw Siouxsie at Anaheim Stadium, opening for Bowie on the Glass Spider tour, and this was better in all respects.

Certainly better than any of the clips from earlier in the month. I think the set-list minimized the roughness and whatever you think of her voice, her overall performance was terrific - especially scaled up to a big crowd of 40,000 with the sound reverberating up and down the Arroyo Seco on top of Jack Parsons' old consecrated stomping grounds and a crescent moon setting behind the stage. The 50-100 of us up on the bluff were dead quiet, except for an occasional creak of a lawn chair or someone sparking up a joint, but someone blurted out "I've seen her a lot of times and that was fucking amazing" at the end of "Sin In My Heart" and everyone exhaled with OMGs and HFSs. A guy standing next to us was there to pick up his son afterward but just decided to hang out and watch the show. Never heard her before, but loved the show - he's a fan now.

Budgie will never be allowed back and McGeoch is dead. I don't know how much better it could get unless "Red Light" gets into the set-list somehow.

BTW, I don't want to propagate any whataboutism but if you're going to pick on someone for singing badly, criticize Ian McCulloch. I saw some clips of Echo's set on Saturday and that was utterly embarrassing.

Amazing, ET. What an experience.

made it clear she wasn’t coming back anytime soon if ever again

to LA or the US or anywhere? I know this was stated as her 'only NA appearance' but I'm still holding out hope she winds up touring again next year. Seems odd to have done the preparation with a band to only do like, 3 shows ever then disappear again. I only saw Siouxsie once, on the Superstition tour, which was great but of course I can barely recall it now. Still kicking myself for not seeing her in NYC for her solo show, which we didn't get tickets for even though they were available and we were staying right down the road from the venue.

I wish I knew about the look out point last night, oh well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0E8qeR90pI

that is one kick ass setlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRF07n4rcO4

Seems odd to have done the preparation with a band to only do like, 3 shows ever then disappear again.

She's doing a dozen more shows in Europe through the summer. I thought when she said she wasn’t coming back anytime soon it was to Cruel World Fest.

I wish I knew about the look out point last night, oh well

FYI for the future: 34.167296°N, -118.166530°W. (gMaps link, street view)

http://www.youtube.com/@richardchavez985 filmed the whole set a couple rows back from the front. It's so great!

i saw her tonight and loved it. her voice was good; definitely stronger on some songs than others but overall, great, and i can't imagine anyone there left with that thought as their biggest takeaway from the gig. if i had one criticism to make it was the banshees songs lacked a little bit of their groove in the drum dept. but that totally improved as it went on.

I saw her yesterday in London at the Troxy. Her voice is a bit rough in places, but not a major issue. The main problem for me was the band. Each song is played in the same plodding and uninspired, undeviating way - and the set overall badly needs a bit of the creativity that McGeogh/Klein and Budgie etc previously provided.

I'm still surprised her and Severin haven't done a (second) reunion with new people (Nick Zinner would go well on guitar).

wait so is she like consistently off key or something?

what, live, recently, or in the past? on recordings: no she sounds on key to me. live recently? not so hot based on these recordings. live in the past? varies.

well i'm just digging into some of her music and on records her voice is lovely! yeah i guess i was trying to clarify what about it live. live is so tough for vocals.

When I started this thread, I was talking about The Seven Year Itch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o4md2W1WIg

She sounds absolutely fantastic on Nocturne

with all due respect, she is as flat as fuck on about 2/3 of Nocturne. I can't listen to it for that reason.

altho, an order of magnitude worse on that Seven Year Itch recording, I agree.