Garbage Days Revisited #68: The Sisters of Mercy - "Vision Thing" (1990)

 

"You won't get what you deserve/You are what you take" - The Sisters Of Mercy - More

In a way, I'm kind of surprised it's taken me this long to write something on the Sisters of Mercy on this blog. Ever since I was first made aware of them around the time of this album via the More single (more of which later), they seem to have been one of those bands that I'll get really into for a bit before they sort of drift out of my consciousness only for me to listen to their albums again a year or two later and go "oh yeah, actually these guys are a bit good aren't they?"

Vision Thing, though, seems to be the Sisters album that tends to be regarded as the runt of the litter when it comes to their output and so it's pretty much an ideal candidate for GDR in my opinion. While First, Last And Always, which featured the soon-to-fracture line-up of Andrew Eldritch, Craig Adams and Wayne Hussey (the latter two of whom would quickly jump to ship to form the Mission after getting somewhat exasperated with Eldritch's control freakery) is rightly regarded as a goth classic with its brooding vocals and icy guitars and the follow-up, the Jim Steinman produced epic melodrama of Floodland was their most commercially successful effort, Vision Thing rarely seems to get mentioned at all. Which is weird because it sold well but the band would quickly self-destruct afterwards and although Eldritch has kept a touring Sisters line-up on the road to this day, further albums have yet to emerge.

It's safe to say that the background to this album was every bit as fractious as the other two if not more so. For Floodland, Eldritch had teamed up with former Gun Club bassist Patricia Morrison but she would either jump ship or be fired (depending on who you ask) once the band had wound up touring that album, eventually resurfacing in the Damned (not a surprise as she's married to Dave Vanian) around the millennium. Eldritch would quickly patch together a new group of ne'er-do-wells including former Only Ones guitarist John Perry fresh from recording the Copy Cats album with Johnny Thunders' band, ex-All About Eve six-stringer Tim Bricheno* and former Generation X bassist Tony James last seen with ill-fated techno-pop one hit wonders Sigue Sigue Sputnik (of Love Missile F1-11 fame) a couple of years prior and would prepare to unleash the Mk3 Sisters of Mercy on the world.

(* Slightly amusing side story - Bricheno had left All About Eve following the messy end of his relationship with Eves' singer Julianne Regan. Somewhat pissed off, Regan would pen the spiteful Farewell Mr Sorrow single about Bricheno (also one of the Eves' best songs it has to be said) which came out while the Sisters were touring Vision Thing around Europe. I've heard the story that allegedly the song came on the tourbus radio as the band were driving between venues leading Eldritch to look up and say "Hey Tim, this song's about YOU isn't it?" and the whole band to have a good laugh at Bricheno's expense. Poor bloke)

Supposedly Vision Thing was conceived by Eldritch and James as a monumental piss-take (if true this wouldn't surprise me given James' record with Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Eldritch's notoriously dry sense of humour) as the most big, hollow and bombastic rock album they could come up with. It's entirely possible this may have been a dig at Eldritch's old compadres Hussey and Adams given the Mission's foray into gothed-up Zep rock on 1988's Children or at fellow former regulars on the Leeds goth scene the Cult whose Sonic Temple the previous year had seen them blunder headlong into stadium rock purgatory (okay, that's a bit unfair, that album did have a good three or four absolute bangers on it but there was a LOT of filler on there). But if that's true then it only half-succeeded. Big? Most definitely. Bombastic? Oh yes. But hollow? I'd argue that this is a record with a deceptive amount of depth to it. Which is arguably proof that Andrew Eldritch can write deep and thought-provoking stuff even when he's trying to do exactly the opposite.

The first thing to be aware of when listening to Vision Thing is that it's comfortably the heaviest of the three Sisters of Mercy albums with Bricheno, Perry and third guitarist Andreas Bruhn being allowed to cut the riffs loose on the likes of the title track and Detonation Boulevard. And despite going for the big dumb rock sound, Eldritch is just as on point and scathing with his lyrics as ever, referring to "Another motherfucker in a motorcade" on the former while the latter has the excellent couplet of "I caught something weird in Ensenada/I've a brother of sorts in Torquemada". Ribbons meanwhile sounds like a Nick Cave murder ballad ("I tried to tell her about Marx and Engels, god and angels/I really don't know what for") given the full on stadium rock treatment. And even scarier, it works.

The fact that the Sisters then follow this up with two shameless power ballads that have to be up there with the most hilariously insincere songs ever (Something Fast and When You Don't See Me) but still somehow manage to carry themselves off through sheer chutzpah, you know that this album is a bit special. Doctor Jeep (named after the Sisters' omnipresent drum machine) picks things up again properly with Eldritch casting a searing view over the world of 1990, referencing Vietnam, Hizbollah, Pee-Wee Herman and "I Love Lucy". Lyrics like "Janie got a crush on the Vietcong/Burning through downtown Saigon/Me I'm sold down the Mekong/And meanwhile in the Sheraton/Doctor Jeep plays on and on and on" are anything but dumbed down which begs the question - was the whole "playing it stupid" thing just a front here or did it actually happen and if so lord knows what the lyrics would've been like if he was actually trying. The mind boggles.

Anyway, which brings us right back to where we came in and the song your friendly writer discovered the Sisters to, More. Even thirty two years after first hearing it, it still sounds absolutely terrifying, a real glimpse into the darkness of the human soul ("I don't know why you gotta be so undemanding") over eight full throttle minutes while lyrics like "Learning to cry for fun and profit/I'm not done yet/Counterfeit dollars or the English zloty/Anything I can get" really make you think that Eldritch missed his calling as some future evil overlord in a dystopian sci-fi world. Which just leaves the relatively restrained I Was Wrong (sample lyric ("I was wrong to ever doubt/I can get along without/I can love my fellow man/But I’m damned if I'll love yours") to guide things home here. Although even on this one, Eldritch can't resist throwing some properly sharp lyrical barbs out there ("In a bar that's always closing/In a world where people shout/I don't wanna talk this over/I don't wanna talk it out/I was quite impressed until I hit the floor/Isn't that what friends are for?/Pain looks great on other people/That's what they're for").

And then it's over. The record, the band, the whole shebang. By the time the group went out to tour Vision Thing, Perry had already left with Bricheno and James both following him out of the door in short order. Eldritch and Bruhn would put out a couple of further charting singles in Under The Gun and a re-recording of the group's early song Temple Of Love to mark the release of their greatest hits A Slight Case Of Overbombing (released in the wake of the first Iraq War natch) which went Top 3 and then...nothing. Eldritch would storm out of his deal with WEA accusing the label of racism on the way for not adequately promoting a joint US tour the Sisters did with Public Enemy (which turned out to be a car crash of epic proportions) and that was that.

Well, okay, not quite - Andrew Eldritch has kept a touring Sisters line-up on the road to this day (including a lengthy stint by fellow Leodensian, Eureka Machines frontman and recently revealed Ghost guitarist Chris Catalyst) although he's frequently stated that he's done with recording songs and if you want to come and hear new stuff then the only way you can do it is to see the band live. I did actually see the Sisters at Leeds Academy in the late noughties just before moving to London and they gave a pretty good account of themselves with enough dry ice to turn the venue into a rainbow coloured swamp and Eldritch, erm, "resplendent" in a Leeds United shirt for the encore showing that he's just as much of a contrary bugger all these years on. Anyway, all I'll say in closing is that Vision Thing remains my favourite Sisters album. Was it a piss-take? Quite simply, it doesn't matter - whether Eldritch meant it to be so or not, this is a big evil dark monster of an album that also rocks like an absolute bastard. And isn't that how all great albums should be?

(Oh and the other band that split out of the Sisters Mk1 line-up? Don't worry, we'll be coming to them next week...)