Pitchfork

It wouldn't be quite right to say the music on Mantaray is overshadowed by the story that comes with it; the truth, with an album like this, is that the two things are hardly separable. When well-known artists step out under new names and solo projects-- even artists a lot less iconic than Siouxsie Sioux-- we have a curious relationship with the results. We can pore over every second, but it's not just to hear where the melodies go or how the guitars are mixed: It's to read how those melodies and mixes stake out ground, how they place themselves within the pop landscape. We know what these artists are like, and what's expected of them, and so we're not just casually listening to them make music-- we're listening into a whole bunch decisions about how and why people choose to present themselves, and those decisions fall as often into the categories of "marketing" and "branding" and "backstory" as they do into the realm of aesthetics.

Siouxsie Sioux has been a star for some 30 years, straight from the first flare-up of punk to the present; this record is anything but a comeback. But the project she's best known for-- Siouxsie and the Banshees, who led the way from punk into goth-- is long finished. The Creatures, the group she started with her Banshee husband Budgie, is also finished-- as is (not coincidentally) their marriage, a fact Siouxsie has contextualized in interviews by talking about her discomfort with labels like "lesbian" or "bisexual." That leaves just Siouxsie this time, and that turns out to suggest a big shift. Siouxsie is the legend; Siouxsie is the beloved icon. She's a one-name star now, and she comes out of the gate on this record singing things that wouldn't be out of place on a teen-pop singer's "This Is Me" ballad: "I'm on the verge of an awakening...Feeling so strong...Can't be ignored."

And she really is pop, for the first movement of this record. For the first time in about a decade, Siouxsie's veering not toward her artiness or her sophistication, but her flat-out star power-- and in the service of a grand, glammy buzzing that manages to suggest cut-rate, guitarred-out Goldfrapp a lot less than you'd think. Any Siouxsie fan will tell you she has something special, and it's not just her punk pedigree: For a few tracks here, she's strident, commanding, witchy, and paler-than-thou in ways you'd laugh off coming from any fresh youngster, and she's still captivating enough that I'd be thoroughly unshocked if she picked up a healthy cult of new teenagers in her fan base. Three tracks in, she's doing a kind of Shirley Bassey strut on "Here Comes That Day", and yes, Siouxsie's coming-out party is going pretty well.

But the part to commend, branding-wise, is the rest of it. There comes a point, early on, where that pop rush wears off: The point of dense, glammy tracks like these is to dominate and bully you, a kind of thrill that can only last so long. Excellent timing, then, for this record to settle comfortably back toward the more opaque and mysterious Siouxsie fans know: It's as if she's invited the public in through the front door amid blasts of pop confetti, but isn't afraid to trick them straight down to the basement. The machine-tooled precision of pop gives way to some of the chaotic punk rumble fans know from the Banshees and the Creatures, like the pounding toms and scrappy guitar accents on "One Mile Below". And that gives way to the kind of atmospheric spook that builds off Siouxsie's voice, with its imperious depths and its ominous quavers: Sequenced together, "Drone Zone" and "Sea of Tranquility" give you the kind of turbulent cabaret air that's been Siouxsie's signature contribution to each of her projects.

It's a success, without doubt. It absolutely doesn't embarrass itself-- if anything, it'll prod some of its buyers to be better, more engaged listeners, whether it's the pop or the art that takes some trying. Neither does it fall into that common trap, the one where new solo singers seem to be trying much too hard to make a case for their own relevance, or at least their potential popularity. But even in its clever, professional navigation of the territory of a Siouxsie solo record-- the solid bid at star-power pop, and the spooked hard edges for the truly devoted-- it has to let something fall by the wayside. Gone is the sense that Siouxsie Sioux is still working on music that might pushb hard in some new direction, music that's free to chase after any odd, scenic dream that occurs to her; for this album, at least, Siouxsie is on the clock, and has professional obligations to fulfill. She does it wonderfully, but if you weren't curious to begin with...