Garbage Days Revisited #73: The Cult - "Electric" (1987)

 

"Drive on baby through the electric night/All the way sister in the taxi of light" - The Cult - Aphrodisiac Jacket

Similar to the GDR I did on fellow goths turned rockers the Mission a few weeks ago, trying to write something on the Cult caused me a bit of a headache because of that mix of trying to find an album which a) tends to be a bit underrated and b) isn't necessarily their best known one. I think the harsh truth is that, while they've come agonisingly close on a couple of occasions (their 1994 self-titled album and 2001's Beyond Good And Evil notably), the best Cult albums are undeniably the first three - Dreamtime, Love and Electric. While Dreamtime and Love tend to get revered as seminal goth albums, Electric is a bit more of a tricky beast but there's one very good reason why I chose it...

Way back when, I remember after leaving school for Uni I joined up with a group that a couple of mates of mine were in. There was just one problem - I was a bass player and the singer in the group already played bass. So it was suggested I try moving up to rhythm, something which I had pretty much no prior experience of and was understandably a bit nervous about. Our lead guitarist, a thoroughly good bloke, basically said "Ah, it's okay - here, I'll tape yer three albums, work those out and you'll be golden". The three albums in question were the Ramones 2CD anthology, Back In Black by AC/DC...and Electric by the Cult. So yeah, it kind of had to be this one really.

As with a few albums I've covered in GDR, the joy about this album is it's simple, straightforward and doesn't mess about. Three chords, a rock solid rhythm section and Ian Astbury's trademark wolf child howl and boom, you've got it. It couldn't be more different from its two predecessors Dreamtime and Love (both fine efforts in their own right) and it's a bit of a weird story how the Cult got here in the first place. By 1986, the group were officially chart bothering material, having struck gold with the timeless She Sells Sanctuary the previous year and seen its two follow-ups Rain and Revolution both breach the Top 40 as well.

Until this point, the group had pretty much been a straightforward goth band - both Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy had their roots in the punk and post-punk movements. The former had been the constant as the band’s frontman right from the tribal rhythms of the group's first incarnation, the Crass-influenced Southern Death Cult, through the brief spell as Death Cult and on to the Cult while the latter had seen service with the Nosebleeds, Slaughter & The Dogs and Theatre of Hate (even appearing on Top of the Pops with them when Do You Believe In The Westworld? became a minor hit) prior to linking up with Astbury.

The first two Cult albums were pretty much powered along by Astbury's shamanic lyrics (he'd grown up with a military family and developed an interest in Native American mythology after spending a lot of time on bases near to the reservations in his teenage years) and Duffy's phased guitars. Dreamtime sums up the post-punk/early goth vibe of the group’s formative years via the pounding likes of Horse Nation, the sky-surfing single Spiritwalker and the gentle Rider In The Snow. However, even as early as Love there were sounds of the group starting to push out into heavier territory on the likes of Phoenix and Hollow Man in amidst the more psychedelic likes of Big Neon Glitter and Brother Wolf Sister Moon although for me it's the stark goth waltz of Black Angel which closes the album that's the high point here.

Initially, the group's third album Peace was meant to be a straight continuation of Love but either the group or their label Beggars Banquet weren't happy with it. Somewhere along the line, someone had the idea of hooking the band up with Rick Rubin who'd just made his name at the time running the Def Jam label and producing the Beastie Boys and Run DMC. It was an odd link-up and who knows what the label thought would result from it but the answer is arguably one of the best straight-up four-to-the-floor rock albums of the era.

The key, it seems, was that despite making his name with hip-hop, Rubin was a huge AC/DC fan (he'd later go on to produce Angus and co's Ballbreaker album a decade or so later). Supposedly his studio tactics (including confiscating all of Duffy's trademark FX pedals) threw the band initially but he did have one ally in the form of the group's new rhythm guitarist Stephen "Haggis" Harris who'd just joined the group from Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction. In Haggis' words when I interviewed him many years later...

"I did get on really well with Rick Rubin...the two of us were both card-carrying members of the Bon Scott fan club and that's how we bonded. The first day I met Rick, I walked down the stairs to the Electric Lady recording studios in New York and the rest of the Cult were there with long flowing robes on and there's me walking in wearing Doc Martens, jeans and an AC/DC T-shirt and Rick was like "Hey mate!""

It's maybe not a surprise that the pair would stay friends afterwards and when Haggis left the Cult after the Electric tour, he'd promptly head out to LA where he and Rubin would put sleaze rock legends the Four Horsemen together. But that's another story (which you can read by clicking on the link in the previous sentence...)

Either way though, there's no denying that Electric is a brilliant album - right from the moment that insistent opening riff from Wild Flower kicks things into gear, it's pretty much one classic after another. Lil' Devil is two minutes of back-to-basics headbanger heaven built around Duffy's snaking riff, Peace Dog well and truly stomps, King Contrary Man rattles along like an out of control juggernaut skidding down the highway and trust me when I say that the riff from Aphrodisiac Jacket is possibly one of the most satisfying riffs there is to play. By the time Memphis Hipshake brings things to a close it really does feel like the world is "shakin' to the ground"

Rubin definitely deserves credit for bringing the best out of the band for this album - Astbury and Duffy are absolutely on fire here, when the former sings "I'm a wolfchild girl, howlin' for you" on Wild Flower, you well and truly believe him while the latter cranks out killer riffs left, right and centre. Compare the versions of songs like Outlaw and Bad Fun on the Peace out-takes album to the lean fat-free ones on here and it isn't even a comparison.

Unfortunately, Electric remains the Cult's high point to date to these ears. For the follow-up, 1989's Sonic Temple, the group ratcheted up the big production and the album suffered. It was doubly disappointing because that album has an absolutely killer opening four songs in the awesome Sun King, lead off single Fire Woman, the insistent American Horse and the sinister Warhol-referencing ballad Edie (Ciao Baby). The trouble is that the rest of it just can't measure up (only the album's third single Sweet Soul Sister even comes close to be honest) and it ends up being a huge disappointment. Maybe we should start rename Nobody's Heroes syndrome (albums which have a storming opening first side then fade away afterwards) as Sonic Temple syndrome for future reference...

It wouldn't get much better afterwards unfortunately - the group would lose drummer Matt Sorum, who'd only joined them the previous year, to G'n'R after they'd finished the Sonic Temple tour and the follow-up Ceremony was just dull with hardly any stand-out tracks and to these ears is probably the band's weakest effort. Their self-titled 1994 effort, recorded with new bassist Craig Adams (ex-Sisters of Mercy and the Mission) took them off down a darker road and was a stronger effort with the likes of Coming Down (Drug Tongue) and The Witch seeing the band at least moving away from the stadium rock dullness of the previous effort even if the overall effect was a bit hit and miss.

Astbury and Duffy would put the group on hiatus shortly after this but would reform around the time of the millennium and this was the first time your correspondent saw them at the 2001 Leeds Festival when they were promoting the Beyond Good And Evil album, another solid effort which had Sorum back on drums (although he'd soon bail out to join Velvet Revolver with his former Gunners bandmates Slash and Duff). They put on a good show that day and it'd be the first of a few times I've seen them in the last couple of decades (the best being a greatest hits tour at Leeds Uni around 2008 or so and the worst being when I saw them at Hammersmith and support band the Mission well and truly upstaged them). A further three albums, 2007's Born Into This, 2012's Choice of Weapon and 2016's Hidden City have followed and they've all been decent efforts if not quite of the same standard as the band's imperial phase. By that reckoning, we're probably due a new one from them any time now so fingers crossed...

Anyway, Electric - for me it's the Cult's highpoint, a simple straightforward no-nonsense stripped down headbanger's heaven of an album which gets in, says what it's gotta say and gets out again with minimal fuss. Don't get me wrong, I think Dreamtime and Love are great as well for very different reasons but for good simple three chord music to drink beer, eat barbecued food and headbang to, you really can't beat this one.