Welcome! Firstly, my thanks to the inestimable Cathi Unsworth and the good folks at ACE Records for my review copy of “Dressed In Black – Goth Divas From The Dark Side”. I was lucky enough to host an entire Q&A session with Unsworth when her authoritative text, “Season Of The Witch: The Book of Goth” was released in 2023 – and this is the soundtrack to accompany it!

In the same vein as her book, Unsworth’s curation follows a wider path than the same totemic names from the upper pantheon of goth, those golden age gurus of our subculture. Her music picks are from the wider streams of subversive music that inspired, ran parallel and draw influence from what we’d recognise as goth music. Naturally, the Ice Queen – Siouxsie Sioux – herself makes an appearance with “Night Shift”, written about the Yorkshire Ripper who cast a grim and vicious shadow over the end of the 70s, and influenced the Banshees as they found their footsteps leading from punk and into something darker…

There are recognizable dancefloor classics like “Cathouse” by Danielle Dax, intriguing deep cuts like “Iceblink Luck” from the Cocteau Twins, and brand new, unnerving dark psychedelic pop in the form of “Idiot Milk” by M U M M Y. I am intrigued by two tracks back-to-back al by alumni of The Birthday Party crowd – Anita Lane and Blixa Bargeld duet sweetly-sadly on “Subterranean World”, followed swiftly by Lydia Lunch and Rowland S. Howard laying down some stark poetic alt-rock on “Cisco Sunset”.

As with her writing, Unsworth roams far and wide to paint a broad picture, the vast canvas of noise painted on so liberally by the singers in black who dared to dream darkly, and demanded our attention with hair-raising, tear-jerking and knuckle-whitening anthems. Not the ‘goth’ songs that have dominated dancefloors for the better part of four decades, but something broader, occasionally bleaker, and often more beautiful still. One for the connoisseur’s connoisseur.

The album has a launch party this Tuesday at The Colony Room Green to which I would dearly like to attend – but the fact that I am on the other side of the country and bound to a full-time career that does not encourage gallivanting off to raucous music events means I leave it to my dear readers who can go! Let us know how you get on…

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