Siouxsie and the Banshees - Kaleidoscope

Digitally remastered reissue of this 1980 album by the Queen of Goth Rock and her busy little Banshees featuring nine bonus tracks including 'Sitting Room', 'Israel' (Single Version), four Warner Chappell demos and three Polydor demos. 20 tracks. Polydor. Album Description

one word TENANT

I love the song TENANT the whole cd is great but that song I can never get tired of. Its got a spooky quietness about it and the guitar pluckings are the best part. You can't go wrong with this. Anyone even curious about this band needs to start with this. The first two albums were more straightforward punk with goth overones. This is were they matured that sound, a must have for post punk fans then get JUJU!! July 8, 2008

Eclectic 3rd album by Siouxsie & the Banshees

As an avid Siouxsie fan, I love everything by this group. Kaleidoscope is the first album showcasing a completely different sound, setting and theme than the previous Banshees albums. Here is the definitive Siouxsie creating a sound that was and is their own. Kaleidoscope on vinyl was an excellent listen to in 1980 when it was released, and sounds even better today remastered. June 28, 2008

they reached their peak with this one.

This has been one of my favorite albums period, and if I had to pick one favorite Siouxsie and the Banshees album, this one just barely wins out over "The Scream" and "Juju", although both of those are excellent, and "Kiss in the Dreamhouse" deserves honorable mention. If you know Siouxsie and the Banshees at all, then I'm sure you know the two singles "Happy House" and "Christine", and they are reason enough to buy it. Really the whole album is very strong, with the exception of "Clockface", which is filler but inoffensive and short. "Christine" is driven by a great bass line and acoustic guitar, with icy vocals from Siouxsie, dealing with a Sybil-like split personality. This album represents a huge leap musically from the artsy punk of the first two albums. There is much wider variety of sonic textures, rhythms, and instrumentation. Drum machines and synth bass are prominent in the bleak "Lunar Camel" and "Red Light", the latter also using a camera shutter sound for rhythm. "Hybrid" and "Paradise Place" have a psychedelic feel to them. "Tenant" is another sparse, bleak. experimental track that is very effective. "Desert Kisses" has a more lush sound with a great vocal by Siouxsie. Only the last track, "Skin" is reminiscent of the sound from the first album, `The Scream", with a more manic feel to it.

Siouxsie and the Banshees often get pigeon-holed into the "Goth" stereotype. Certainly none of these songs fall in the "cheery" or "chipper" category, but, as this album demonstrates, these guys were far more varied and gifted than any of numerous Goth posers that followed them.
February 20, 2008

Colorful, shifting, fractured, mesmerizing, psychedelic

It's hard for me to think of Siouxsie & the Banshees as post-punk or goth. From the very start there has always been a pop sensibility of the post punk approach to their music. With Kaleidoscope, Siouxsie & the Banshees embrace both never looking back, melding poppy synthesizers and drum machines with punk guitar and bass riffs.

Kaleidoscope is very, very psychedelic like the images you see when looking through a kaleidoscope. Colorful, shifting, fractured, mesmerizing. This is the only S&TB in which EVERY track is as brilliant and fascinating as the last. No filler here at all.

I find with every Siouxsie album there's always one unheard hidden gem for me that stands out. On A Kiss In The Dreamhouse it's Circle. On Hyaena it's Belladonna. Peepshow it's Turn To Stone. On Kaleidoscope it's Lunar Camel. This synth and drum machine driven track is trip-hop before there was trip-hop which proves how adventurous, experimental, influential and ahead of their time S&TB were.

Other favorites are Happy House and Christine of course but also the short but sweet Clockface with Siouxise singing "Wo -oh-wo-oh" over an infectious rock beat. Red Light with its camera snapping effects and Paradise Place, especially when Siouxsie sort of yodels and coos.

Kaleidoscope is the quintessential Siouxsie album and the perfect place for any one new to the band to start. The remastered version of this disc has Siouxsie's voice a bit higher in the mix, the echo effects are smoothed out and all the instruments can clearly be heard. It also contains demo tracks of Christine, Happy House, Paradise Place, an instrumental Lunar Camel called Arabia, Eve White/Eve Black, Desert Kisses, Hybrid, an awesome unreleased instrumental track called Sitting Room and the 7" single version of Israel.

Hands down tied with A Kiss In The Dreamhouse as my all time favorite Siouxsie album.
October 19, 2007

What CAN I say?

This is a good album and it feels like a transitional album. "Juju" and "Join Hands" and more of the "Goth/Hitchcockian" style while this album leads up more to their "commercial/slo-dive" type style. There are enough songs on it to make it worth having ("Red Light" one of my least favorites). So...what CAN I say? Buy it! Afterall, it IS Siouxsie and the Banshees for God's sake. September 12, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...