Inoa'Ole is a chant in round of Hawaiian indigenous voices in warbling tones as glass ringing pierces the sound. When the booming drums enter with Siouxsie's wordless vocal trying more modal figures the chanting subsides but continues. The title line appears infrequently. Like much of this album it's in the atmosphere, a gently called dance on a creepy predawn.
Ice House begins with a vocal over a steady thumped drum. The voice keeps to its original pace as the drumming builds into an even pattern. Images of incest and erotica blur into promises of the preserving powers of ice. The lyric is derived from a John Bowen teleplay which was served up by the BBC in their tradition of horror stories for Christmas. Siouxsie's words are an abstraction rather than a description of the plot and emphasise the unsettling obsessive turn of the plot. The song ends with sounds of munching food.
Dancing on Glass strikes up a brisk 2/4 rhythm. A organ shimmers in the distance. Siouxsie's vocal is the same kind of jazz age swing as the single Right Now. Images of wilful damage and decadence by moonlight as the windows are smashed and their shattered remains danced upon. Again, Budgie's rhythm is unmasked by guitars in this decidedly un-rock outing.
Geko begins with the sounds of the jungle as Siouxsie whispers the opening lines. A marimba clomps the main chord progression in what it the first song on the album to have any kind of riff. Variously screaming, talking or hissing the spoken verses, Siouxsie breaks into the infectious chorus. The atmosphere of humidity and insect bites. The chorus only has to mean its images: Panoramic banana, a passionfruit samba. Pale skin is itching, a tropical fever. This ended the old side one with the closest thing to pop music fun on the whole record.
Side two begins with Sky Train and that begins with very busy drumming which would sound mechanical but is just expertly written and performed to interact with echo. If the idea is to emulate train motion clicking on the tracks its goes beyond the call and delivers an image of an unstoppable Hell Express. Siouxsie wails in multitracked rhapsodies around and through the onslaught.
Festival of Colours begins with more Hawaiian chanting soon descanted by Siouxsie singing in local dialect before switching back to English. The festival is a rite involving the scattering of coloured powder like ochre. While the music, again heavily percussive builds to an enjoyable plateau there are some listeners who might have wondered if it weren't just the musical equivalent of a silde night.
Miss the Girl is a response to J.G. Ballard's novel Crash which described upwardly mobile urbanites who pursue automotive impact as an extension of sexual pleasure. The marimbas strike an ominous figure as Siouxsie's dispassionate vocal sings of violence as a car is pitted against a human body. Not quite as frozen as The Normal's Warm Leatherette (also based on Crash), the track nevertheless explores the effect of witnessing violence though the eyes of one exhausted by it. This might have seemed a strange choice as a single but it is one of the only ones here that has the components of a pop song and is the closest the duo get to sounding like their band of origin, The Banshees. It got to 21 which ain't nothing.
A Strutting Rooster plunges deep into relentless heavy percussion with drums and marimba parts often blending into each other as Siouxsie chants in multitracked harmony. Is it as simple as the sight of a bird or is there the darker suggestion of cockfighting. Ambient effects rise and fall. Marketplace voices as Siouxsie's phrases are played like samples.
Flesh starts with sharp breath which might be sexual or hefty inhalation of lines of drugs. Siouxsie narrates a spoken word description of a high life party as we start to hear the sounds of merriment and socialising. A loud strident chant breaks out like a chorus but isn't placed like one: Piggy squeals and donkey brays at a sober party Doggy barks and horsey neighs try to shock the party. Light marimbas keep time with a barely discernible figure as percussion which sounds random goes in and out of focus. Images of violent cinema in production and editing. The time would be right for the pair to have seen and been affected by Cannibal Holocaust. It reminds me of the Banshees' song Monitor off JuJu with its lines about screen violence and the blurring of audience and onscreen victim. The party sounds swell up and everyone joins in the chant about Piggy squeals until it dissipates as though this was a recording of a drugged up bash gone hellishly wrong.
Siouxsie and Budgie last recorded under the Creatures name two years before with the EP Wild Things. Made as a kind of holiday project the set had turned out good enough to release and when the Banshees next took a break Siouxsie and Budgie set to again. Throwing the dart at a map and travelling to where it hit, Hawaii. They used the freshness of the unfamiliar locale to make field recordings and construct songs around rhythms and chanting provided by The Lamalani Hula Academy Hawaiian Chanters.
Budgie's drum setup was not a kit but a collection of percussion instruments that were played separately in arrangements that frequently had him composing and playing with far greater sophistication than he was able as the Banshees' drummer. There are no high hats or cymbals or snare drums here. This guitar, bass and keyboard free record is an extension to the path away from conventional rock music that the Banshees had already been treading, at least experimentally, since the Kaleidoscope LP, Budgie's first record with the band as one of its most creative additions.
For her part Siouxsie continues to write like the lyricist of the Banshees but takes things a little further toward chanting and vocal motif, enjoying the luxury afforded by the creative detour this recording offered. As her voice must stand in for what the music abandoned (rock instruments) she is more on attention here than any time since the first Creatures release. So, you still get blank faced descriptions of darkness and violence but here it can as easily sound like a whisper as much as a scream.
The Creatures have proved to be one of the rare out of band experiences that worked and kept working in exploratory mode as the Banshees of the late '80s and '90s moved steadily toward the middle. There is a clear sense on this record that they both felt relief at being able to avoid the pressures of expectations that would meet every Banshees album thereafter. The results might have the unfortunate effect of allowing auld post-punkers like me use of this record as evidence that we, alone among all generations, had the coolest and most sustained resistance to the cock rock overground. But the other side of that is that this energetic and invigorating music is there for the discovery of anyone of any vintage to use as a spur to their own creativity. Creativity is what this album is made of and adventure is how it sounds. The rest is up to the listener.
Listening notes. I still have my vinyl copy of Feast but it was so used and beaten by my younger self that I went back to the CD A Bestiary of The Creatures which compiles the first EP and the songs from the single Right Now. It's a great package with a strong remaster and comes with my earnest recommendation.
