Live Review: The Cult and the Living Things, Tuesday Aug. 24 @ Roseland Theater-- Local Cut

Live Review: The Cult and the Living Things, Tuesday Aug. 24 @ Roseland Theater

August 30th, 2009 [2:24PM] Posted by: Matthew Singer | 1 COMMENT

Words by Matt Singer, Photos* by Vivian Johnson.

One good thing about a show where a band plays an album front-to-back in its entirety: you can accurately time your bathroom breaks.

At a regular gig, leaving to take a piss is always a bit of a—ahem—crapshoot. Hit the toilets during a meandering space jam and risk missing the start of the ass-kicking single. But if you know what order the songs are being performed in, you also know when the group is going to hit that series of filler tracks, and you can run off to relieve yourself with some peace of mind. For example, when British hard rock vets the Cult came to the Roseland Theater on Aug. 25 to play 1985’s Love, I knew that after the stomping title song, I had approximately seven minutes of “Brother Wolf, Sister Moon” to take care of business.

Not only was I able to go to the bathroom, I also managed to get money out of an ATM and buy beer before getting back to my spot just in time for the shimmering throb of “Rain.” In any other concert situation, those would’ve been anxious minutes.

Other than that, though, these full-album shows suck a lot of life from the live music experience. Isn’t a big part of the excitement waiting to see what a band will do next? How it’ll transition between songs from different eras of its history? What rarities it’ll pull out of its ass? And besides, even with some of the greatest records of all-time, there are always at least one or two—sometimes as many as three or four—tracks that have no business working their way into a set. Imagine if the Beatles did a reunion tour and decided to play all of Abbey Road: That’d mean having to sit through “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “Octopus’s Garden.” I’ll tell you right now, I’d go buy a hot dog during the former just to throw it at Ringo during the latter.

In the case of the Cult, though, the biggest problem was that it chose the wrong album. Love is certainly solid—it marks the start of the band’s transition out of its Gothy post-punk roots into the lean, mean arena rock machine it would later become—but not sturdy enough to hold up an entire set. It definitely starts strong: “Nirvana” and “Big Neon Glitter” form a bombastic one-two punch, and “Love” is the best indication of the heavy, riff-oriented direction the group would head in on subsequent recordings. But “Brother Wolf, Sister Moon” is a slow, boring glacier of pseudo-Native American mysticism stuck right in the middle, and from it’s either big hits or thudding misses the rest of the way.

Photos by Vivian Johnson: The Living Things

And that’s pretty much how it went live. Emerging 30 minutes after what I hear was a ferocious set from once-hyped St. Louis firebrands the Living Things*, the band—featuring the stalwarts, singer Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy, and, well, three other guys—delivered out of the gates. Astbury, who fronted that ill-conceived early-2000s Doors “reunion” and looks like he’s now advanced to impersonating late-period Jim Morrison, still possesses one of rock’s best voices, and the ageless, rough-hewn Duffy remains an underrated guitarist, with a sound pitched somewhere between Angus Young and the Edge. After the aforementioned midpoint piss-break, however, the concert’s conceit bogged the band down mostly with humdrum rockers like “Hollow Man.” Of course, there was one big highlight in the latter part of the set: the great “She Sells Sanctuary,” still the Cult’s signature tune and an unabashed barn-burner. It finally got the appreciative but somewhat languid crowd moving—only to have the energy levels lulled downward by Love’s slow-dissolving closer, “Black Angel.”

Truthfully, if the Cult was going to do a full-album performance at all, it probably should’ve chosen the followup to Love, 1987’s Electric, in which the band stripped off its psychedelic accouterments completely to become a less-macho version of AC/DC. It’s their top-to-bottom classic, and one that would probably translate best in a live setting. That was apparent from the encore, which began with roaring versions of “Electric Ocean” and “Wildflower” and ended with the band’s second-best single, “Love Removal Machine.”

Then again, if they were to do Electric live, that would mean having to hear the worst thing the Cult ever put on record, its horrendous “Born to Be Wild” cover.

See, you just can’t win with this idea.

*Lengthy Sidebar: Vivian Johnson took photos of openers the Living Things. At the last minute, we learned that the Cult would not be allowing photos at the show, but a secret LC operative did manage to take a few iPhone shots (the best of which was included at the top of this post. Making things more complicated, the Living Things began their set very early and played very briefly. Matthew Singer only got to catch the final song. LC editor Casey Jarman blames this all on the Cult, who he suspects are crotchety old rockers who don’t want their pictures taken and really wanna go to bed early and furthermore, may or may not be involved in Cultish activities. These views are Casey’s and Casey’s alone.

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