Goth is back. Siouxsie Sioux is reforming The Banshees and appearing on the cover of MOJO. An old-school Tim Burton TV series is imminent.
The tabloid image of the 1980s is one of glamour, fun and money, but Goth was just as much of a phenomenon during the decade, the dark underbelly of late-20th century pop culture, music and fashion.
And now novelist and esteemed music journalist Cathi Unsworth has put together a fulsome tribute, following Goth from its roots in the novels of Charlotte Bronte and Bram Stoker to the bands and artists who created a hugely popular music genre in its own right.
A labour of love, ‘Season Of The Witch’ features vivid depictions of growing up in late-1970s arable Norfolk with Sid and Nancy, hunger strikes, Thatcher’s rise (Unsworth is convinced she’s the antichrist!), National Front/anti-Nazi marches and the Yorkshire Ripper on the telly, and local ghost stories providing the village gossip.
It’s hardly surprising that she, along with legions of other young people, looked to the dark side and specifically those harbingers of doom, Dennis Wheatley, Nico, Juliette Greco, Jim Morrison, Alesteir Crowley, The Stooges, Black Sabbath, Robert Smith, Siouxsie, Howard Devoto, Nick Cave and the three Ians of Goth: Curtis, McCulloch and Astbury.
What emerges is essentially a timeline of Goth, with particular emphasis on the key music acts and outliers. Unsworth posits some remarkable theories – for example, aligning Killing Joke’s debut album with disenfranchised London Black youth of the early 1980s – but somehow pulls them off, and there’s also a great section on Psychobilly’s birth in a sweaty Victorian pub in Hammersmith.
The musical analysis is sound (though arguably a book like Simon Reynolds’ ‘Rip It Up’ covered similar territory and with a lot more brevity/impact) and there are the occasional revelatory factoids about a recording session or songwriting inspiration.
But ‘Season Of The Witch’ is at its best when filtering the music through the prism of current affairs, whether the miners strike, Falklands War, Brighton Tory Conference bombing or Rupert Murdoch’s rise and rise. Prescient and enjoyable as it is, I wanted much more personal stuff – there was the opportunity for this to be the Goth version of Sylvia Patterson’s ‘I’m Not With The Band’.
The enjoyable, pithy ‘Season Of The Witch’ ends with key depictions of Goths in literature and movies – a glaring omission from the latter is Katrin Cartlidge’s remarkable performance as Sophie in Mike Leigh’s 1993 film ‘Naked’, surely the ultimate Goth of British cinema.
Unsworth talks about the book in this recent WORD podcast.
movingtheriver.com 