Pop Music Reviews : Siouxsie & Banshees: Still Masters of Genre

Starting out nearly 20 years ago as Sex Pistols devotees, Siouxsie & the Banshees took the clangorous pop premise of punk and gave it an innovative twist. Infusing their music with brooding romantic imagery and delivering it with a creepy, often alarming severity, they--along with Bauhaus and the Cure--laid the foundation for Gothic rock. During the years the noisiness abated, singer Siouxsie Sioux’s abrasive keening calmed into a sophisticated wail and the Banshees settled into a lush, gloom-tinged pop mode.

At the Wiltern Theatre on Thursday, Sioux was as pallidly elegant as ever, presiding over the evening like a postmodern version of Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra, all glittering jewels, gleaming gold and dramatic gestures. The exceptional light show enhanced the mood tremendously, bathing the crowd in warm yellow light, setting the band’s silhouette against a smoldering red ground and casting Sioux’s larger-than-life shadow on the screen behind the stage.

Although many of the band’s greatest hits--”Spellbound,” “Israel,” “Cities in Dust”--were missing, their absence wasn’t sorely felt. The set was built around the best material from the new album, “The Rapture,” and, freed from the snug production and arrangements, the new songs unfurled as vibrantly as the Banshee classics.

All told, the evening was convincing proof of Siouxsie & the Banshees’ continued mastery of the genre they helped create.