Sunday, September 13, 2009
A+E, Music, Reviews

LIVING COLOUR

"The Chair in the Doorway"  (MEGAFORCE)

Six years is a long time between studio releases, even with a handful of live albums and a rarities/B-sides collection to tread water. But most of the tracks on Living Colour’s fifth set could just as well have been included on its 1988 debut. Guitarist Vernon Reid’s metallic squalls and singer Corey Glover’s robust, multi-octave pipes remain the principal draws, as the rhythm section’s crash and burn adds high-test gasoline to an already explosive mixture.

Lyrically, as musically, the band has never been terribly subtle, and those clunky tendencies haven’t been rectified. Perhaps it’s Glover’s enunciation, but it seems the rhymes and words are often forced between the pile-driving riffs that power this funk/metal/punk/blues/hard rock locomotive.
 
Regardless, the group’s attack remains propulsive, and when Reid tears into a typically unhinged solo on “Decadence,” the music retains its perfect storm of raging intensity and brain-frying licks. The techno effects that pepper “Method,” adding psychedelic elements to one of the disc’s only mid-tempo offerings, indicate fresh directions worth exploring more fully. Elsewhere, the disco beats of “Behind the Sun” and the stripped-down hard funk of “Bless Those,” featuring an unusually restrained opening that explodes into gloriously primal hard rock, push things back to slightly more commercial waters, at least until Reid unleashes one of his patented twisted solos.

The songs aren’t as hooky as in the past, but the performance hasn’t lost an ounce of its notorious conviction. Living Colour has carved out a unique niche, and this is another impressive offering in its exciting, if inconsistent, career. 3 STARS—Hal Horowitz