From the air
Post-Banshees work from innovative guitarist goes overground.
By Victoria Segal.
Post-punk and disorderly: John McKay’s solo LP is an archaeological curiosity.
John
McKay
★★★★
Sixes And Sevens
TINY GLOBAL PRODUCTIONS. CD/DL/LP
“WE DON’T care if you vanish into thin air,” sang Siouxsie Sioux on Drop Dead/ Celebration, the B-side of 1980 single Happy House, as much a virulent hex as it was a song. Her curses were aimed at drummer Kenny Morris and guitarist John McKay – “those arty ones,” Sioux eye-rolled – who suddenly quit the increasingly factional Banshees in Aberdeen, two days into the tour for the band’s second album, Join Hands. The pair were so fearful of the singer hunting them down at the station, they furtively left Scotland on a small plane. With good reason: “If I’d come close to either of them, I feel sure I’d have come close to throttling the life out of them,” Sioux said in 1998.