Siouxsie Sioux’s revival is one of the great music stories of 2023. The post-punk pioneer returned to live performances for the first time in a decade in May and has made a number of concert and festival appearances since. These triumphant sets were followed by magazine retrospectives on Siouxsie and The Banshees. The hair is not as backcombed as it once was, but the spark and spike in her personality remain intact. Always influential, Siouxsie has inspired several tribute albums over the years, and there is a new one out in August. Night Club tease the album with a new single of “Cities in Dust.”
Minor-key maestros Night Club follow the classic formula of charismatic singer and inspirational synthesiser genius that leads to so many dance classics and great live shows. Writer and singer Emily Kavanaugh and instrumentalist Mark Brooks have been making music together for more than a decade, performing their own compositions, cover versions and music for film and television.
“Cities in Dust” seems like a very apposite song for the summer of 2023, but Siouxsie Sioux was writing about Pompeii when she created it. She and the Banshees turned it into a dance-rock classic. Here Brooks provides a great bassline and BPM for the dancefloor, not recreating the chugging guitar of the original but adding layers of beats and keyboard hooks. Kavanaugh is on playful form, not aping or satirising her hero, but stamping her own color and authority on the piece.
