Living Colour are one of the most underrated and most lethal bands on the planet. Mainstream success has for the most part eluded them because while they have been able to straddle the both the commercial suburbs and underground/indie ghetto, they've more often than not chosen to ignore the safe side of the street and prefer to tread where you need to keep an eye out over your shoulder..the place truly great music is born.
The lads of Living Colour have always had that sublime marriage of perfect pop sensibilities mixed with a crushing heaviness and disregard for convention that often leads them off into free-form, cacophonous sonic explorations. But it's controlled chaos. That the sinister beauty of Colour's music...these boys know what they're doing. If a change or transposition is jarring, then it's meant to be. What may strike you initially as a disconnected flurry of notes or noises will turn out to be the central framework from which the rest of the song is hung if you give it another measure or so. They'll lull you to sleep with a feather one moment and break a cinderblock across your head the next.
This is a band of virtuosos who do everything in service of the song, which can be rare in a band with this much talent. Many times the song is relegated to the backburner, merely serving as the platform for which a musician can showboat and satisfy their own ego. But Colour takes all that energy and puts it into the arrangement, collectively taking the entire band to a higher level. They are a true BAND and a compete sonic experience.
Individually: Bassist Doug Wimbish is the MVP of the album. His use of effects and left of center tones are the perfect co-conspirators for Vernon Reid's guitar playing. It's been awhile since I've heard bass playing this creative. His lines are the meat and potatoes of many of the songs here.
Guitarist Vernon Reid is brilliant as always...unconventional, creative and effective. His use of the intangible elements of guitar playing (noises, tones, micro-tones, scratches, flutters, scrapes, feedback) married with his expert command of odd syncopations, polyrhythms and orchestral way of stacking his lines and melodies continue to inspire and serve the cause of Living Colour without fail.
When you have two forces of nature like Wimbish and Reid in your band, you need elements in it that can yoke and consolidate those energies. And that's what vocalist Corey Glover and drummer Will Calhoun do. While Reid and Wimbish may make you feel like you're flying off the rails with them, Calhoun and Glover give you a focal point to latch onto. Calhoun's somewhat restrained (i.e. not overly flashy) drum playing only serves to intensify what the Reid/Wimbish duo have going on. That's the sign of a truly gifted drummer: he both anchors the song and allows it to fly at the same time. And Glover is able to cut through the beautiful din of his band with vocal melodies that fit in snugly with the quirkiness that can drive the musical pulse of the song. He gives order to the chaos and gives it direction.
Sonically, this album is cherry headphone material. The album is full of direct, bludgeoning riffs played by a band that means what they're playing. It's very focused production for a very focused band. The core of the album is what the four of them are playing together. But there are so many layers and tiny moments thrown in that give a song it's character and that can change the atmosphere of the song in a drumbeat. Little notes, licks and harmonization's that bubble up out of the soup and recede again. At times it's like just the reverb or decay from a note hits you without ever having been sure you heard the original note at all. And what can sound at first like a simple lone melody line can upon closer inspection be three or four guitar tracks weaving around , swelling and deflating against each other. It's a treat to just sit and listen to this with headphones. You realize that as much as Living Colour has the ability to stomp your ass, they also have an incredible sense of the subtle as well.
Songwise, there's not a clunker in the bunch. This is one of those rare albums that keeps me hooked in for the entire thing and I can play it straight through. This is also becoming rarer in today's musical climate where emerging artists are all vying for the one big single that puts them over the top instead of focusing their energies on making the ENTIRE album good.
These are master musicians doing what they do. And they do it with craft, intention and the joy that true musicians have when they are making music together.
