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For this gig, I have to admit taking a different tact and actually booking public transport (a Train ) , not once did I realise I was about to enter Dante’s Seventh circle of hell, the one full of miini demons, dressed in pink cowboy hats watching Tic Tok vids endlessly of the arch demon known to us as Harry Styles and discussing pilgrimages to see his Succubus Taylor Smith!!!! Yup I chose to travel the day after the Harry styles gig in Cardiff stadium, after Taylor Swift announced her gigs for the year, the only saving grace on the whole journey, apart from my phone and Exit_International Black Junk on full volume a message from the H-Bomb himself letting me know we had tickets for TSOL & MDC in the Exchange in Bristol.
This was my first trip to Wolverhampton and to a venue (The Halls) now run by Live Nation but seen as a centre-point on the Local Authority’s regeneration of Wolverhampton. Not having seen the Venue before it still has an old school venue feel and an excellent sound system.
Tonight was all about ticking off another of those bucket list artists never having seen Siouxsie before and being honest I approached it with a bit of apprehension having seen some of the usual phone recordings of earlier shows on this tour. I needn’t have worried from the start things were almost bang on, as the intro of Camille Saint-Saens carnival of the animals drifted away the night kicks off with a fantastic 1-2 of “Night Shift” and “Arabian Nights” but Siouxsie is not happy with the sound something that then gets sorted very quickly after her berating the sound engineer. By the time we get to “Dear Prudence” the band are spot on and in the groove with a sound to match. We had a superb “ Loveless” a creatures classic “But not them”, before too soon we’re into “Christine” and “Happy House” and the set comes to an end. But just telling you about the songs played doesn’t really give the full picture, this was a show, Siouxsie orchestrating the musicians visuals enhancing each and every track.
Moving into the first encore, we had two!!!! we had a blinding “Switch” followed by “Spellbound”, then the second encore of “Hong Kong Garden” and “Israel”.
After opening the Halls with Blur, this Siouxsie gig, Sparks the following night and many more top line artists to come, I’d really like to think that music can help regenerate a city and chatting to the owner of Stay Loose Records the following day he confirmed that yes things have been picking up since they re-opened The Halls and, footfall and number of people staying over has increased.
Just maybe the Local Authority have got this just right.
Author: Nev Brooks
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