LOVE (1986)
ELECTRIC (1987)
For me, the two biggest contemporary rock albums of 1987 were U2’s The Joshua Tree and The Cult’s Electricity. The first was the monster that propelled U2 to true international stardom and the latter made big stars of The Cult in the USA, and elsewhere I suppose, big enough to sustain a long, successful career without becoming household word superstars at the level of U2.
I’d read about Southern Death Cult and Death Cult, the forerunners of The Cult, in the NME long before I could buy the records and they seemed to be also rans in the post punk, post New Wave, post New Romantic Gothic rock branch of popular music, destined to be cannon fodder like so many others bands of the same ilk. I had little idea what the music sounded like except perhaps for “She Sells Sanctuary,” which was playlisted on the Saturday Shadow Show on Radio 5 (as it then was), the UK centric modern rock (before the phrase was coined) show that showcased the best of British during the mid- and late Eighties, and this tune was just a big, anthemic song yet not significantly distinguishable from the other bands in the genre and barely registered on my radar.
it was only in 1987 when “Lil’ Devil” off Electricity was being punted as the lead single that The Cult totally got my attention. The song sounded like a retro hard rocking homage to, in my mind, mid -‘70s hard rock, and was a huge change from the anthemic, soaring Goth sound of the earlier Cult. I’ve always loved a certain type of simple, loud, hard rock that doesn’t take itself too seriously and “Lil’ Devil” sounded as if it was cut from the same template.
I was so enthusiastic about this song that I went out and bought the record (a rare thing for me at the time, as I usually waited for record sales before I bought anything) and also, when I saw it in the record rack with Electricity, Love which was the Cult’s 1985 release that represents the swansong of their Gothic phase. As it turned out, Electricity was the sugar high, the contact high, the quick fix that quickly faded and Love became the album that grew on me as a highly satisfying, emotionally engaging, ambitious statement.
Electric is obviously fashioned as a throwback kind of hard rock album, with a contemporary sensibility somewhat at odds with the musical climate in the UK at the time, and aimed straight at the mass market of Middle America where this kind of rock never went out of style as if the various fashions in rock between 1976 and 1987 never happened, and from this perspective it’s highly enjoyable. On the other hand, the production values are so high and the vocals recorded so clearly that the lyrics have greater prominence than they might otherwise have, and, to be frank, for the most part they’re quite risible and sound like stream of consciousness shit Ian Astbury made up on the spot. Maybe the words are meant to be enigmatically poetic, Dylan like mysteriousness even, but to me it just sound naff, at best, and stupid at worst. Hard rock and metal lyricists are prone to writing banal, pretentious and plain dumb lyrics and that‘s okay if the vocals are lost in the wall of sound, but here there’s no escaping and the lyrics quickly grate on the nerves. The relentless riffing, often with no sense of dynamic tension, also becomes old too quickly. So, if Electric is, well, a bolt of electricity to start with, it doesn’t have legs.
Love, on the other hand, with its wall of sound guitars, soaring vocals and words that aren’t so crystal clear, bears repeated listening and remains enjoyable throughout. Every tune reverberates and resonates with energy, tunefulness and high ambition for glorious emotional impact.
The bottom line is that Love is worth repeated listening and Electric is nice every now and then, but not nearly as compelling as its predecessor. Hearing Electric convinced me to buy Love but not to buy any of the following albums. I heard the lead tracks on the radio and they sounded of a piece with the best of Electrictherefore more of the same for which I didn’t care that much in the first place.
Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy have had good careers in hard rock, and Astbury even stood in for the late Jim Morrison in Doors “reunion” shows, so I guess Electric did what it was intended to do, and more power to Astbury and Duffy for the ambition and the ability to achieve their aims but The Cult, post-Electric, is the epitome of a band that found a template for success, big success as that, and then continued relentlessly in that vein, with ever diminishing returns for a punter like me and nothing to persuade me to collect their records.
