Some Girls Wander by Mistake
Genre Good
Post-Punk
Rock
Bleak
Dark
AnthologyThe review
Critics and fans treat this collection as the definitive document of the Sisters of Mercy's early sound — the raw, skeletal run of singles and EPs that helped fix the template for gothic rock and dark wave before the band's more polished 1980s albums. The consensus strong point is the atmosphere: these recordings are praised for their cold, cavernous space, the drum-machine pulse against wiry guitars, and Eldritch's deep, deadpan baritone, all of which reviewers single out as remarkably fully formed for material laid down by a band still finding its footing. The 12-inch "Temple of Love" and the brooding long-form tracks on The Reptile House are routinely named as the highlights, and the compilation's completeness is itself part of the appeal — it rescued a run of out-of-print singles that had been unavailable for roughly a decade.
The recurring reservation is one that attaches to any singles-and-EPs round-up rather than a curated album: the sequencing has no arc, the production quality and arrangements are uneven across a three-year stretch, and some of the earliest B-sides are treated as historically interesting rather than genuinely strong. Reviewers also note the band's penchant for theatrical overstatement as a matter of taste — the drum machines and melodrama that fans find magnetic are exactly what leaves some listeners cold.
Where opinion divides, it does so along genre lines rather than about quality: within gothic rock and post-punk audiences the record is near-canonical and one of the best places to hear the band's origin point, while listeners coming from the broader mainstream tend to see it as an archival curio for devotees. On the whole it is warmly regarded as one of the better ways into the band's early era, with its unevenness understood as inherent to its assembling of scattered early releases.
Who it's for
Listeners already steeped in gothic rock, dark wave, and early-1980s UK post-punk; Sisters of Mercy fans who want the complete early singles and EPs in one place rather than hunting down out-of-print vinyl; and anyone tracing the roots of the genre's sound and imagery, for whom this is close to essential listening. It also suits listeners who value a stark, drum-machine-driven, atmosphere-first aesthetic over conventional songcraft or production polish.
Who it's not for
Anyone drawn to the band by the more produced, big-production sound of Floodland or Vision Thing may find these early recordings thin and samey. Listeners who want a cohesive, deliberately ordered album — rather than a chronological archive of singles and EPs with uneven fidelity and sequencing — are likely to bounce off it, as will those unmoved by gothic melodrama and theatrical, deadpan vocals. — dark, brooding themes (loss, despair, religious and romantic imagery) · dramatic/melancholic lyrical content · no explicit sexual content, graphic violence, or substance-use content of note
Birds of a feather...
- MusicCloser (1980)
Strongest sibling: cold, cavernous post-punk with a baritone voice, drum-machine-like pulse, and a sustained atmosphere of dread and spiritual crisis. Like the source, it performs alienation through restraint and repetition rather than release, and it is foundational to gothic rock's austere wing.
97% - MusicUnknown Pleasures (1979)
Shares the source's austere post-punk architecture: cavernous production, baritone vocals used as another cold instrument, and a sustained mood of alienation rather than catharsis. Both treat negative space and repetition as structuring devices, making this a natural companion for anyone drawn to the Sisters' early cold-room aesthetic.
96% - MusicViolator (1990)
Connects through gothic theatricality and eroticized religious imagery, a resonant baritone, and cavernous ritual-like production. It is more polished and pop-facing than the source, but the same tension between melodrama and emotional distance runs through it.
78% - MusicPower, Corruption & Lies (1983)
Post-punk negotiating grief through machine rhythm and detached vocals, with cold synth textures set against human melody. Less gothic than the source, but it shares the austere electronic pulse, oblique lyrical world, and beauty found in emotional ambiguity.
74% - MusicDummy (1994)
Shares a claustrophobic, slow-dread atmosphere, alienated intimacy, and a refusal of cathartic release, with vocals delivered at a deliberate emotional distance. It is trip-hop rather than goth rock, but the cold, immersive mood and negative-space songwriting are close kin.
72% - MusicTo Bring You My Love (1995)
Brings a similarly gothic, theatrical persona and a fixation on desire, damage, and religious imagery. Its blues-rock palette is warmer and more confessional-adjacent than the source, yet the constructed alienation and dark melodrama overlap.
68% - MusicThe Sweet Goodbye (2026)
Matches the source's gothic theatricality, occult and religious motifs, and bleak content delivered through performance rather than confession. Its horns and disco-adjacent arrangements make it more dark-spectacle than cold-room goth, but the tone of morbid pageantry is adjacent.
62% - MusicDubnobasswithmyheadman (1994)
Uses long hypnotic builds, machine rhythms, and a cold urban-alienation mood akin to the source's cavernous pulse. Its ecstatic dancefloor release differs from the Sisters' grim procession, but the immersion-over-resolution approach overlaps.
58% - Musicin grief or in hope (2026)
Shares the source's interest in slow accretion, repetition, and making absence or subtraction carry emotional weight, plus a generalized grief and transcendence duality. It sits in drone and post-metal rather than goth rock, so the match is more textural and structural than generically exact.
55% - MusicCathedral (2026)
Draws on gothic dread, religious iconography, and a descent-into-darkness architecture that rhymes with the source's baroque nihilism. Its riff-heavy metal and multimedia concept framing are far from the Sisters' austere singles, but the theatrical gothic mood is a real point of contact.
50%