[tweetmeme]Bassist Steven Severin hinted this weekend that the final four titles in Siouxsie and the Banshees’ catalog — 1987′s Through the Looking Glass 1988′s Peepshow, 1991′s Superstition and 1995′s The Rapture — finally will receive expanded reissues Sept. 15, more than four years after Universal Music pulled the plug on the band’s reissue campaign midstream.
Severin dropped the hint on the Facebook group Siouxsie (The Banshees & Other Creatures), posting a “Hangman”-like game (“Here we go:- Consonant or vowel? —–/—-/—/———/———”) and asking fans to offer up letters. He filled them in as commenters gave suggestions, stopping after a fan made the leap from “F-NA-/FO–/–E/F-FTEENTH/-E-TE–E-” to “FINAL FOUR DUE FIFTEENTH SEPTEMBER.”
Aside from confirming the four reissues would feature bonus tracks, Severin offered up no other details. Universal’s online catalog does not yet list the four Banshees titles.
The news follows Universal’s release of a limited-edition double 7-inch of “Hong Kong Garden” in April, several months after Severin began posting to the Facebook group about a broader Banshees’ campaign that could include box sets: “This won’t be a one-off. Once we start — we will be putting things out on a regular basis. Universal have a 3 year plan proposed,” he wrote last fall.
The Banshees’s reissue campaign launched in 2005 with a 2CD deluxe edition of the band’s 1978 debut, The Scream. In 2006, single-disc reissues of Join Hands (1979), Kaleidoscope (1980) and Juju (1981) followed. And in 2009, three more titles — A Kiss in the Dreamhouse (1982), Hyaena (1984) and Tinderbox (1986) — each received single-disc reissues.
In February 2010, though, Severin reported that Universal was ending the Banshees’ reissues:
“Universal have decided not to release any more single disc remasters. As the final four albums don’t have enough extras to warrant the double disc ‘deluxe’ treatment, they have halted our programme four albums short. They have given us the opportunity to license the last four (Peepshow, Glass, Super, Rapture) to another label. We are looking into this.”
In the intervening years, the Banshees obviously did not reissue the albums through another label. It remains to be seen what extras will be included on the four reissues.
