Last here just before Covid hit in 2019 it’s not been the long seven year wait between visits that preceded their tour hit Australia, and tonight the Astor Theatre is packed with a great mix of punters, some who look old enough to have been there in the beginning, but many may not have even been there last time The Sisters released an album, after all it has now been 32 years since the glorious ‘Vision Thing’.
All that means little to the gathered masses tonight though as we run through the gamut earliest to latest creations. The guitars are loud tonight and the vocals somewhat lost in the mix but it gives the show of rockier edge than last time we saw them, it’s a mix that’s strangely compelling, more danceable and enticing. The setlist tonight is spot on too, a wonderfully constructed trip through time that takes in the oldest and newest material. It all starts off with the throwing down of teh gauntlet of brand new ‘Don’t Drive on Nice’ a track that only debuted this year in Europe and which is incredibly good. That insight into the present is followed by the sprightly 16 year old ‘Crash and Burn’ that also has had no official release. It’s a great way to start a set and prove that things are far from stale creatively even if Eldritch obviously thinks the album either dead or redundant.
It’s down to ‘Ribbons’ from Vision thing to take a real first glance backwards before we’re back again in the present with the two year old ‘I Will Call You’. It’s an interesting gambit to essentially lead off with new material when the crowd’s only real reference to it are things like YouTube, and whilst I appreciate the standpoint I know there are a lot out there like me that sees nothing at all wrongs with the anachronistic pleasures of the CD and vinyl record.
If you’re old school like me you’ll know that a Sisters show is all about the atmospherics, earie glows of red and green cutting across dry ice whilst Andrew Eldrich strides and holds poses, at times he’s a red lit Nosferatu, like the one who holds ferocious poses against the crunching guitar on ‘First and last and always’ Next he’s green-lit for the wonderful new track ‘Genevieve’ with his microphone titled up and head back, it’s pure theatre.
