Join Hands
| Join Hands | ||||
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| Studio album by Siouxsie and the Banshees | ||||
| Released | 7 September 1979 | |||
| Recorded | May–June 1979 | |||
| Studio | AIR studios, London | |||
| Genre | Post-punk | |||
| Length | 42:29 | |||
| Label | Polydor | |||
| Producer | Nils Stevenson Mike Stavrou |
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| Siouxsie and the Banshees chronology | ||||
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| Originally-intended cover | ||||
The vinyl reissue of the album in 2015 featured the originally-intended, John Maybury-designed sleeve with an edited image from a Holy Communion card.
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| Singles from Join Hands | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Melody Maker | very favourable |
| NME (1979 review) | favourable |
| Record Mirror | very favourable |
| Sounds |  |
Join Hands is the second studio album by the English post-punk band Siouxsie and the Banshees. It was released in September 1979 by the record label Polydor. Upon its release, it was hailed by the British press, including Melody Maker, Sounds, NME and Record Mirror.
Join Hands took the topic of the First World War as its inspiration. Musically, it is darker than the band's debut album The Scream: it sounds more claustrophobic and more haunting. It was the last album with the band's first recorded line-up, as guitarist John McKay and drummer Kenny Morris quit the group after a disagreement at the beginning of the British Join Hands tour, on the day of the album's release.
The record peaked at No. 13 on the UK Albums Chart. "Playground Twist" was the only single released from the album. Join Hands was reissued on vinyl in 2015, along with the very first artwork that the band had presented to Polydor in 1979.
Join Hands was written over a period of six months. In 1979, the band watched news reports from Iran, including scenes of repression and curfews; it was one of the first times they had seen images of people being shot and killed on television. In England, the political situation was also unstable, with rubbish piling up in the streets of London. Siouxsie Sioux saw it as "a real time, everything in flocks and uncertain but also festering underneath, and because this stuff from the past that was just left there rotting there and it needed to be acknowledged and then cleaned up, not just swept away still rotting". The band were inspired by these events. The theme of war emerged through the songs: rather than a pro-military message, the lyrics were meant to capture the spirit of what things were like at the time.Miranda Sawyer stated that Join Hands took "the very un-rock'n'roll topic of World War I as its inspiration".
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