Back in black

From Wednesday Addams to Siouxsie Sioux, goth's fishnet-draped brigade is back, in a revival of the original outsider youth cult - or did it ever go away?

- Sylvia Patterson

Last November, the Tim Burton-directed, Netflix Addams Family reboot, Wednesday, saw a dance scene go viral on Tik-Tok: Wednesday herself, played by Jenna Ortega, flailing beautifully in black organza to the Cramps’ goth-schlock-psychobilly 1981 cover, Goo Goo Muck. It came after Burberry showed a dramatic, extreme-goth collection for this spring; soon after, the Cure sold out three nights at Wembley Arena. Now, two hefty books are about to arrive documenting goth’s endurably undead history, John Robb’s The Art of Darkness: the History of Goth and Cathi Unsworth’s Season of the Witch: the Book of Goth. And summer sees the return of the long elusive goth sphinx herself, as Siouxsie Sioux headlines Latitude festival.

This month brings the definitive original soundtrack, Young Limbs Rise Again: the story of the Batcave Nightclub 1982-1985. A stunningly comprehensive, 90-track compilation, it features the iconic ghouls heard at London’s early-80s goth mecca and includes a lusciously illustrated, 80-page history book, featuring the scratchy, B- movie, Batcave artwork that defines the goth aesthetic to this day.

But if goth feels suddenly back, it never really went away, eternally lurking in a teenage bedroom somewhere: unavoidable in recent years in the black tears of Billie Eilish and in Noel Fielding’s comedy-horror jumpers on The Great British Bake Off… What’s the enduring appeal? Kris Needs, author of the Young Limbs Batcave book and a regular Batcave DJ, sums up his own carefree goth years with two words. “Freedom and irreverence,” he says. “ It’s a spirit these days I find really rare.”