The Cult: Electric (Best Album of All Time?)

This blog got over 2,000 hits this month, so we'll celebrate with Electric by the Cult. I've long been fixated with the backstory about the making of this album. The story goes that 1986 The Cult were working on a lengthy psychedelic album that was taking forever. That is to an extent true By chance they met Rick Rubin who had just produced License to Ill for the Beastie Boys. The story goes that Rick Rubin offered to do an album with them starting from scratch. When the Cult arrived in New York Bill Duffy was supposedly given a rented Les Paul and a Martin amplifier. No pedals were used and there are no guitar solos longer than 30 seconds on the album. If I'm not mistaken there are only two overdubs on the entire record. Ian Astbury's voice has a kind of perfection to it. If you've heard the first two Cult albums they are very different sounding- The Cult started out in the same scene as bands like The Cult and Joy Division but they were very different in so far as that they had thing for what today is called "classic rock" radio. The general consensus is that The Cult sold out and became a hairband. I don't think that's an entirely fair description. I am 100% in favor of the approach to making rock and roll that The Cult had on this album. There are goth bands that are able to do something more atmospheric and get away with that, and the Cult themselves had covered that ground fairly well on Dreamtime previously. It does include a cover of "Born to be Wild". It might be the best rock and roll album ever. War and Pain by Voivod is pretty good, but that's another very stripped down album, it's jet that Voivod used a lot of very odd chords and dissonance. I want hipsters to come to the fore and claim they've made a better album. It hasn't happened. They won't do it. It will never happen. iI's against the laws of physics.