The early nineties, for me, were marked by the lovely smell of the smoke machine and the heavy mystery of dark, dank clubs. I’ve always loved that smell and the excitement the ethereal fog creates as it fills the room. The reassuring thing about a Sisters of Mercy show is that it will always be enveloped in an abundance of smoke. It’s like a magical vapor released from a genie’s bottle, and Andrew Eldritch, the only original band member that is part of the current tour (save for Doktor Avalanche, the trusty drum machine), waits for the smoke to completely shroud the stage before he chooses to present himself.

The First Avenue show on Tuesday night opened with the beats of Doktor Avalanche but proved to be more about thrashing guitars than the groove machine. And although Andrew’s vocals were buried too low in the mix, we were in for a treat indeed. “Ribbons” and “Flood I” helped set a sexy, if not seedy, tone with skin, mascara, and stolen guitars. We heard the dark moral of “Alice” unfold and they played “Giving Ground,” a rarity by The Sisterhood! New song “Romeo Down” was introduced by Mr. Eldritch as a “murder mystery without the murder or the mystery…okay, just a bit of murder” and was performed against red and pink lights like a valentine. “Flood II,” my favorite song of the evening, was complemented by oceanic blue streams of light and healthy puffs of smoke, and found Eldritch hissing “like the sea” into the microphone, bringing the first set to a dramatic close.

The impressive light show continued for two more encores, before the show finished with “Temple of Love,” the stage awash in green and golden rays of light.

While I’m not convinced that the backing vocals should ever overpower Andrew Eldritch’s, as during the chorus on songs like “This Corrosion” or “Dominion/Mother Russia,” guitarists Ben Christo and Chris Catalyst’s did energize the live show. I feel lucky to have seen The Sisters three times in the early nineties (one of those shows was at DAR Constitution Hall, with Public Enemy and Gang of Four), and their shows are always more than mere melancholy. Sisters of Mercy songs, when you get past the smoke and despair, are quite smart. The lyrics transport one to another world: dark, glamorous, and exotic. Whether it’s a shadowy hallway or pre-perestroika Russia, it’s always a theater of the mind. And that sense of drama was what everyone turned out (and dressed up) to see, and it was on full display during the stirring Sisters Of Mercy show at First Avenue Tuesday night.

[review by Jennifer Hood, photos by Marcus Johnson]

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