Gig Review: The Sisters of Mercy @ Hunter Lounge, Wellington, 26 October 2022

They say you should never meet your heroes. The idea being that they seldom live up to expectation and it often only ever results in disappointment. Sometimes, a variation on that old adage can be applied to seeing your favourite bands perform live. More so, if you’re seeing the band for the first time, some 35 years after their feted heyday.

Such was the case when The Sisters of Mercy played at the Hunter Lounge in Wellington on Wednesday night. Maybe I just expected too much. Perhaps it was because I was a little too sober. I’d read and heard mostly positive reviews of the band’s Auckland set the night prior, and felt confident that Sisters v.22 would match my own not unreasonable expectations.

All I wanted was the “hits”, some atmosphere, the requisite quota of melodramatic darkness, and a decent light show. Not too much to ask.

What we got was somewhat less than all of the above. Sure, we got the biggest hits (hits, in context of the 1980s indie charts), but we also got a lot of new-ish, unreleased material - around 50 percent of the set list - which ultimately failed to stir the loins, and virtually all of the hits felt a lot less than the sum of their original parts.

When the set opened with ‘Don’t Drive on Ice’, a relative newbie which wouldn’t have been out of place on the band’s faux-metal Vision Thing album, it felt a little bit like hearing a very good karaoke replica. The sound was thin, a little tinny even, and I felt certain the volume inside the packed venue was somehow muted, if not a little muddy. Surely they’ll amp things up and sort out the mix?

But no, nothing changed as we weaved our way through a 20-something strong set list. Newer tunes were dispersed at regular intervals, easily the best of which was ‘But Genevieve’, alongside a run of better known work which included a lightweight ‘Alice’, ‘Marian’, ‘More’, ‘Detonation Boulevard’ and The Sisterhood epic, ‘Giving Ground’, which briefly had me upping my inner goth to feet shuffling and head-nod mode. Nothing really pulsated my chest or buckled my knees.

I was pleased Vision Thing’s slower-paced sleeper gem ‘I Was Wrong’ was included, but by this time I was despairing a little too much for main man Andrew Eldritch, his once majestically deep baritone now a mere shadow, replaced in 2022 with a sort of unhappy-go-lucky growl.

When the time for an obligatory encore arrived, the band did appear to up the ante a bit, perhaps in anticipation that their night’s work was almost done, and versions of ‘Lucretia, My Reflection’, ‘Temple of Love’, and ‘This Corrosion’ were as good as could be expected, given the rest of the night.

I get that sometimes a band can become tour-worn and jaded. I get that a band can fall prone to merely phoning-in a performance on occasion. And I get that a band wants to introduce new work to an audience ostensibly there to celebrate the stuff they already know.

But the gig just lacked “soul”. There was no real sense of authenticity. Both guitarists could well have been cutouts from a Sisters tribute act, and Eldritch himself was fairly underwhelming as a posturing frontman just going through the motions. Almost like he was trying to resist the urge to take the piss out of himself and failing badly. And yes, I appreciate that you can’t ever take this genre too seriously … and sometimes you should never meet your heroes.

PS. The support act was Brisbane duo Elko Fields, a curious mix of the White Stripes and The Kills’ aesthetic, and they played about half a dozen raucous songs to an enthusiastic reception.

Photos: @nothingelseon, thanks bro.

Classic Album Review: Sisters of Mercy - First and Last and Always (1985)

By 1985, and the rather belated release of the Sisters of Mercy debut album, First And Last And Always, the band had already established its reputation, alongside the equally influential likes of Bauhaus and the Jesus And Mary Chain, as forefathers of the still fairly embryonic goth-rock genre. 

The Sisters were already a fixture on the UK independent charts thanks to a series of highly regarded landmark singles and EPs - Alice (1983), The Reptile House (1983), Body and Soul (1984) - and had impressed as a darker, harder, black-leather-clad alternative to the leading bands of the (by then) mass-marketed punk and “new wave” scenes. 

After making fans wait a couple of years for a full-length album, it’s probably fair to say that First And Last And Always was a highly anticipated release. And those early EP releases have all gone on to become highly sought after by vinyl collectors and fans alike.

The Sisters of Mercy would release just three (studio/non-compilation) albums; the bigger budget follow-up, Floodland (1987), is another classic of its type, with, for better or for worse, far more emphasis on production values, while Vision Thing (1990) found the band losing its way a little, with main man Andrew Eldritch seemingly content to set the band’s default option to: “bloated metallic parody of former self”. As poorly received as it was however, even Vision Thing contained the odd gem. 

First And Last And Always then, pretty much represents the Sisters Of Mercy in their purest, most unaffected form, and it’s the only Sisters album to feature key original, Wayne Hussey, who would later go on to front The Mission. This is where it all started, and that's probably all that needs to be said. 

Highlights: opener ‘Black Planet’, the epic closer, ‘Some Kind Of Stranger’, plus ‘Walk Away’, ‘No Time To Cry’, ‘Marian’, and ‘Possession’.

Classic Album Review: Sisters Of Mercy – Some Girls Wander By Mistake (1992)

The fact that Some Girls Wander By Mistake went on to become the highest charting Sisters of Mercy album of all won’t be lost on fans of the band’s earliest independent EP-based output. Some Girls Wander is basically a compilation of most of that material – including the feted ‘Reptile House’ EP – and it showcases a large portion of the band’s very best work.

Most of this stuff never made it on to any other Sisters album – although ‘Temple Of Love’ and ‘Alice’ quite rightly feature on the “greatest hits” package, A Slight Case Of Overbombing – and for that reason alone Some Girls Wander is (by both design and default) pretty much essential for any next generation Sisters fanatic. Especially given that playable vinyl copies of the original EPs are difficult to source these days.

Some of the material found on Some Girls Wander can be a little challenging at times if you’re not already familiar with the band’s earliest work, which often veers towards the more industrial end of the alternative and goth scales, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and I suppose one of the consequences of belatedly compiling EPs is a lack of the sort of natural cohesion you might ordinarily expect from say, a studio album.

But since there were only three studio albums and one other compilation (the aforementioned Slight Case) – outwith a plethora of poorly recorded bootlegs and unofficial “live” recordings – this is an important release within the context and wider career of the Sisters of Mercy.

‘Temple Of Love’ is a definite highlight, and it’s great to have the original version on here, as opposed to the slightly inferior 1992 reworking that preceded this album’s release. It almost goes without saying that ‘Alice’ is another obvious classic, but we also get a brilliant cover of ‘1969’ (The Stooges) and a fairly decent attempt at ‘Gimme Shelter’ (Rolling Stones).

However, I was a little disappointed that ‘Emma’ (Hot Chocolate … believe it or not!) never made the cut, as I always regarded that particular EP track as a genuine hidden gem within the band’s back catalogue, even if only for its ever so slightly twisted vocal performance.

That’s only a minor complaint though, and Some Girls Wander By Mistake would have to rate right up there with the very best of its genre, and certainly it sits comfortably alongside Floodland and the band’s debut album as an essential Sisters of Mercy release.

Classic Album Review: Sisters of Mercy - Floodland (1987)

Floodland was the Sisters of Mercy’s second and penultimate album, and it has to be considered one of the most essential Goth-Rock releases of all-time.

For the band itself – pretty much limited to vocalist/guitarist Andrew Eldritch and bassist Patricia Morrison by this stage – Floodland represents an almost perfect peak, sandwiched as it was between the raw, red-blooded approach of the band’s exceptional debut, First And Last And Always, and the over-cooked, metallic, bombastic nature of the final Sisters full-length effort, Vision Thing, from 1990.

The most striking thing about this album initially is the increased reliance on synths and electronics, something of a move away from the guitar-based dynamic of its predecessor. Though in saying that, Eldritch’s guitar playing was pivotal to achieving what has become the quintessential “Goth” sound, and it does remain a core element here; it’s merely that it isn’t anywhere near as predominant or immediately obvious as it was on First And Last And Always.

Backing vocals also play a significant part in adding to the atmospheric, almost epic, sweeping feel of Floodland; vocal support coming from the likes of the New York Choral Society (most notably on ‘Dominion/Mother Russia’) and a multitude of others (on ‘This Corrosion’). No surprise really, given that these are the two tracks that had major production input from one Jim Steinman – see Meatloaf and assorted other “big” sounding production.

While ‘This Corrosion’, ‘Dominion’, and ‘Lucretia, My Reflection’ were extracted from Floodland as singles, all peaking inside the UK Top 20 at various points during 1987 and 1988, it is the less heralded album tracks like ‘1959’, ‘Flood Part 2’, and (especially) ‘Driven Like The Snow’, that left the biggest impression on me – at the time, and again when revisited recently.

In 2006, as with the other Sisters of Mercy albums, Floodland enjoyed a makeover and a reissue, the updated edition containing four additional tracks; two B-sides – ‘Torch’ and ‘Colours’, the sublime full-length version of ‘Never Land’ (at around twelve minutes, as opposed to the 2.46 minute version on the original album), and the live favourite, ‘Emma’, a Hot Chocolate cover of no little repute, a track that for my money showcases Eldritch’s vocal at its most melodramatic. Awesome stuff.