Sisterhood

As evening approached, the humidity drained from Melbourne city like the dregs of sencha from an earthernware bowl. Seated as I was in the Oriental Tea House on Little Collins Street, I proposed to my companion that the elemental spirits had granted mercy to the army of Goths now gathering in Richmond. My perspicacious companion disagreed. He proposed that the unnatural concentration of white faces and black PVC had itself occasioned the drop in temperature. And it's true, that even at the height of the concert when the floor was rebounding underfoot and the air was a seething mass of music and crimson, the heat never touched me. Of course, I was down to my corset by that point.

I was never going to resist seeing the Sisters of Mercy, and if the chance to do it in an intimate venue only existed in Melbourne, then to Melbourne I was bound. Consider it making up for my pathetic excuse for an adolescence. But even when my knowledge was limited to the appearance of "Dominion" and "This Corrosion" on Video Hits, I always loved the Sisters. And they performed both!

What better way to set off a street that's already doing remodeled-genteel, than with goths? Black clad, scarlet-booted scarecrows in the coffee house, top-hatted coteries in the Mexican cantina, and above all the frilled, laced, and feathered procession winding around the side of the Corner Hotel. Inside, the Corner offered exactly the kind of black, eccentrically-angled space with occasional columns and dubious carpet such an event requires. Passing into the cavern-like darkness, populated with those glistening, rustling figures, the last residues of the day lifted from me like steam. "At least I'm dressed for it," quipped the black-uniformed security guard. This was Roddy, with whom I built a certain rapport over the hour I stood marking my place at the front barrier before the first act came on. I had no prior idea who or what Kim Salmon was, but pairing the Sisters with a genuinely insane blues singer was actually quite a good call.

At his request, I explained to Roddy a few things about the British post-punk scene and the Sisters themselves. By this point, the current threefold Doktor was visible on the stage. His astonishment at the band's longevity prompted me to consider my own obsession. I'd call it a rare week I don't listen to the Sisters in some form. A single track on the dance floor can make or break a club for me. The soundtracks for my novel in progress uses "Marian" and "Ribbons" to bookmark the points of strongest, darkest emotion. I told Roddy he was about to experience the real thing, the reason these people wore black. But when he asked me to explain the exact difference between Goth and Emo, I confessed myself stumped.

Then the smoke machine billowed. The stage was drenched in purple. The wavering silhouettes of the three microphones were all that could be seen; except by the people behind me who could also see my head. I had at least one friend back there somewhere, but I'd been hanging onto this barricade for the past two hours for a reason and this was it.

Andrew Eldritch has the most amazing skull. In the stage light, it made me think of phrenology, what could possibly be read from that sculpted bone. He has strong, sculpted hands. He is a puppet master, there's no doubt about it. He controlled the stage and his off-siders absolutely, and exerted a near-hypnotic influence upon the audience. He spoke occasionally, the relaxed mode of his feeding-panther voice, that carried effortlessly. "Here beginneth the lesson." This audience knew it by heart.

They opened with a melange of "Doctor Jeep" and "Detonation Boulevard". Doktor Avalanche began pounding, Christo and Catalyst started strumming those howling, vertiginous riffs and they didn't stop. I know the history, I know how recent the current line-up is, but this was pure Sisters "slamming through." Right through your blood and bone. At the first skirls of "First and Last and Always", I was howling. Then we hit the first of the "new" songs, the ones that haven't been recorded. Except by people with IPhones.

"Crash and Burn" is Sisters and it's good. The lyrics are up on their homepage, and You Tube will here be found to be serviceable. But of the other new work, I have identified "Arms" and "Still" from the same sources. But not the one he announced, with fiendish glee, as "The Undress Box". But then, then the opening bars of "No Time to Cry" rang through the mist and as one, the audience convulsed.

Yes, they played "Dominion", "This Corrosion", "Ribbons" and "More": to see him, hear him snarling more! There was no standing still: you could have been unconscious and still dancing in that crowd.  But they also played "Flood II", "Amphetamine Logic" and "Alice", which is a personal favourite for reasons I have never quite fathomed. I think it reminds me of the first real parties I went to at Uni, in rickety terrace houses with stoners slumping across the stairs. You'd think that would be "Ribbons", but no: that makes me think of other things, rather further up the stairs.

They made us work for those encores: the thought did occur to me, that there was clearly no cellar below else we'd all have been down there by now. A royal prerogative, to make us work. But we earned ourselves "Something Fast" and then with a real and obvious joy, they launched into "Vision Thing". There was no flagging in pace or energy or sheer passion: Christo and Catalyst both followed that up with guitar solos as memorable for their acrobatics as their finger-shredding virtuosity. Those two were more than watchable, they were gorgeous and sang like angels. In any other company, they'd have been the focus. But here it was all for the master, when he came back on to perform "Lucretia, My Reflection".

And then, then, they started in on "Temple of Love."

I'm not entirely certain how I made it back to the Most Gothic Hotel in Melbourne. I think I must credit my boots; my perennial, hand-crafted boots, that have surely attained a totemic consciousness by now. Suffice to say I did arrive safely and in possession of everything I left with, saving my arm muscles and several remnant inhibitions. I rediscovered the muscles the next morning. Now, I am left to savour my memories and some really excellent sencha.