Deep, Sleek And Bleak

Jat Storey

6 years ago

Get ahead, go figure, go ahead and pull the trigger 
Everything under the gun

First thing first. The Sisters Of Mercy are one of the most important bands of my musical life, they exploded into my consciousness when I was 17 and were all so deep, sleek and bleak they briefly warped me into being the only goth in south west Wales. Floodland is very much an alltime Top 5 LP for me* and it still sounds perfectly poised and crystalline to my tired old ears.

Second thing second. I saw The Sisters at their tenth anniversary show at Leeds Polytechnic on 17 February 1991 and they were just incredible. I was skinny, dressed all in black and hanging onto the rail at the front. It is still very nearly my best gig ever.

Third thing third. To simplify matters a little, following a monumental strop/contractual ding-dong Andrew Eldritch** has not released any new music since 1993’s single Under The Gun, although new songs do feature in their live shows.

Fourth thing fourth. I was lured into seeing The Sisters Of Mercy on Saturday 7 march 2020 at Manchester Albert Hall by a couple of my mates. I probably would not have bothered if left entirely to my own devices.

There’s your MF-ing context.

I have always loved a goth crowd and Saturday was no exception – I just like the way proper goths make such an effort and I have always had a thing for the women of the tribe^. There were an amusing amount of us there that were obviously first editions, all apart from a few chosen ones, a damn sight less consumptive looking than we used to be and far less hairy^^.

The Albert Hall, Manchester is my very favourite venue in the north, a stunning looking ex-Methodist chapel, lots of beautiful tiles and glass; capacity of about 2000 but bigger bands love to play there.

With Germanic precision the gig kicked off at 8:15, a keyboard dude stands at the back, two long-haired guitarists with identical guitars bossing a Vision Thing-era rock look hit the stage, someone switches Doktor Avalanche on and on comes the dude we have all been waiting for, Mr Eldritch. The opener is the incredible ‘Lucretia, My Reflection’ and it sounds a bit … underpowered, inaudible vocals. Teething problems with the sound maybe.

No. For the hour and twenty minutes The Sisters were on stage it became pretty clear, pretty fast that this was just a poor gig. Eldritch really didn’t seem to have any voice left at all, the guitarists did all the heavy lifting for him, vocally and he was just a bit … unprepossessing. I have no issue with anyone going bald and putting a few pounds on, I’m no hypocrite I hope, but he was just bad on Saturday; at his best he was a magnetic, slinky enigmatic frontman.

So many of the tunes were ham-fistedly arranged too, they slaughtered ‘This Corrosion’, cut it down in cold blood and the delicate drive of ‘First And Last And Always’ never stood a chance. ‘Alice‘ survived better than most, as did ‘Marian’ and along with the, excellently played, ‘Flood I’ and ‘Flood II’ was the highlight.

We all filed out feeling suitably gloomy and a bit ripped off. It was more than that for me though, I’ve lived long enough to know that you really shouldn’t have idols, they let you down, but I just can’t help it, that’s the way I am wired. I felt heartbroken, truly.

It has taken me three days to listen to The Sisters Of Mercy again. I was nervous, I didn’t want my love for them to have been tainted by a deeply unsatisfactory show. I cued up Floodland on my iPod with the all the relish of a very hairy man about to pull a large plaster off his scrotum, in public, on a very cold morning. It was great, truly. In fact the result sent me on a Sisters bender, which is how I end up here Under The Gun tonight.

Released to promote a greatest hits-y thing true obsessive dweebs like me didn’t need Under The Gun had an interesting genesis. Terri Nunn, ex-Berlin, had her, umm, breath taken away when she heard ‘This Corrosion’ on the radio and contacted Mr Eldritch with a song she wanted to record. Bang, bang, bang, bash, bash, bash – guitars duly added, along with an incendiary rant from Eldritch and Under the Gun took flight.

It really is a suitably odd record; half synth pop balladry and half demon dark. It took me a while to like it, but it won me over and hasn’t lost anything in the 6 years, or so, since I last played it. Terri Nunn’s vocals are great, all manner of yearning and depth in there, a rawness too but in a very AM radio stylee.

The track gets darker as it continues, moving from a late 80’s soundtrack sound to something really odd as the guitar makes itself known and after a 1-2-3-4 Eldritch launches into a great ranting monologue, mixed damn low in the mix; purposefully, to avoid some troubled hick with a litigious family blowing his head off to it in Buttfuck, Idaho (stolen from article shown below).

Forget the many steps to heaven
It never happened and it ain't so hard
Happiness is a loaded weapon and a
Short cut is better by far

The 12″ has two mixes – Metropolis and Jutland. The latter is a bit longer and the Eldritch bit is a little clearer, is my scientific analysis of that. I prefer the Metropolis mix myself, it’s smoother, like me. ‘Alice (1993)’ is a retooling of the 1983 track, it is a gleaming brighter, harder and more strident mix, good, but it loses the endearingly quirky charms of the original.