Siouxsie .:. Mantaray

Siouxsie Sioux — previously of the Banshees, the Monsters, and the comic books Sandman and Death — has been through more iterations than I can accurately describe. From adorning my bedroom wall to mixing into both my teenage too-goth-to-handle fantasies, as well as those other teenage fantasies, to call her an icon is an understatement. She's a force of nature.
In the '80s, she seduced both the popular kids and the kids who wouldn't be caught dead listening to anything resembling popular. Her solo debut, Mantaray, is equal factions Madonna electropop, KMFDM bass-synth-brass bombast, and Sarah Vaughan swagger. "I feel a force I've never felt before/I don't want to fight it anymore" she sings. If you believe Pitchfork, she's talking about the breakup of her marriage and her bi-curious tendencies; or you can see it as a new exploration of her inner pop diva stepping out, taking over, and having creepy and beautiful Björk-like spiders and butterflies crawling all over her, as they are in the cover, and being awash in the glorious—and unapologetically catchy—songs on this album.