whether it's easier to look deeply into the more exacting elements of what Siouxsie's chants are throughout this record, or instead simply absorb the mutating, haunted atmosphere and choose to assume there's some meaningful purpose to that sound bed, there's not much here you could poke holes in. after establishing themselves with better and more intriguing takes on psychedelic new wave, Juju is the culmination of everything dark they saw swirled into one.

perhaps better than any other record that reaches such heights, it feels too natural. the way it's constructed, the methods and slight pauses and repetitious, reverbed shrieks—both vocally and instrumentally—are almost too self-evident. yet i'm sure it didn't feel that way back when this catchy but equally dark strain of gothic rock was still in its infancy (and simultaneous first 'golden age'). even taking it at its face, there's something ineffable that creates such a haze, like there's some imbued spirit that creates more life than what the sounds themselves could ever heap together on their own. at least there's plenty of food for thought once you dig into the ground it's half-buried in.

Spellbound is immediately, especially as an opener, their greatest mission statement of being one with who you're enraptured around; Arabian Knights, Monitor, and Night Shift all at different stutter-steps find the worst in humanity, of violence and manic surveillance, and attempt to create something outside of those seemingly unavoidable trenches; and Into the Light right after Spellbound is another intensely natural pathway, from limerence to intense yet unsure awareness of mortality, and being blinded by a constructed reality.

how you even try to define the darkness it tries so desperately to skate the surface of is difficult; at least Halloween is a respite of much more playful pointlessness within nocturnal bliss instead of some unspeakable issue. but "sentinels of misery" and "a beautiful mask in plastic cast" are Monitor and the b-side's explorations that delve deeper than the near-spotless start of the record ever wanted to nag at; by being so willing to drag its feet and dredge further down, it's simultaneously far less inviting and much more useful to experience as an out-of-body retelling, recontextualized through what's left.

while it is certainly an exercise to reach through that fog, towards the ventricles in the album's heart, it allows you to trace the path better, to at least see the fuzzy shape of what's at hand. cannibalism personified as a vampiric woman to end on Voodoo Dolly, after plain excising of some unlocatable self-criticism on Head Cut, is a big pill, but its role to further show muddied lives is beautifully macabre. even if how the album shows its soul makes itself far too fragile to be seen in full without collapsing in the cold, it forces you to find solace in and flee towards the light that you still have left.