THE CULT play Grove of Anaheim Jun. 3; photo Tim Cadiente
Flashback: IAN ASTBURY / THE CULT 2016 interview…
The Cult return to Southern California following several months on the road, the release of a fresh new album, Hidden City, and more live dates on the horizon, indicating 2016 to be another busy year.
“We’ve been increasing our productivity in terms of performing and touring,” singer Ian Astbury said.
“We haven’t really stepped away from it too long.”
Not a band to rest on their laurels, The Cult continue to evolve and move forward, including the recent addition of Damon Fox playing both rhythm guitar and keyboards.
“We’ve got a great live band, right now. It’s sonically much different. I mean, anybody who’s seen us hasn’t seen this band with a keyboard player. The band right now is very connected and the set list we’re working with, as a narrative, works very well.”
Performing live is more or less second nature to Astbury, citing that pretty much everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong at shows, so they just roll with the punches.
“Something alchemical happens when you walk on that stage. You can’t really explain it or articulate it, you just have to experience it.”
Hidden City marks The Cult’s tenth studio album and lyrically, it contains Astbury’s observations and interpretations of life.
“Travel’s really important to me,” Astbury noted.
“It kind of gets me out of my environment. You know, instead of just taking impressions of media or printed material. That’s definitely a part of it, as well, but I find that travel has the most profound influence, for me.
“Hidden City really refers to our internal lives, our intimate lives. I mean, you could say, spiritual lives, intuition. Information that comes in through the heart is usually good information. It might be negative information coming in but it’s still authentic in the way you interpret it. Once it gets caught in your cognitive process then it becomes distorted or whatever…
“I think our intimate experiences are what really forms our characters. Every individual has a different life path and they’re all valid. But I was really referring to the heart, intuition as being the core theme of the title. And I could expand upon that but we’d be here forever.”
Each song is multi-layered with possibilities of meaning and thoughts to provoke or inspire further contemplation.
“There’s no right way or wrong way to perceive this record,” Astbury said.
“I mean, I have my perspective on it. But there’s also contradiction. You could have a completely different conversation with me tomorrow. Depends where I’m at.”
Forming in 1983, The Cult hit the ground running in terms of putting songs together so they could start playing live, with Astbury and guitarist, Billy Duffy collaborating since its inception, forming the cornerstone to the band’s longevity.
“We were in a live music scene,” Astbury recalled.
“Basically, you just got your songs together as quickly as possible so you could get out and play. We were very impulsive.
“But over the years you develop a desire to want to craft songs and give them a little more time to gestate.
“There’s so many points of reference that’s woven into the record, sonically woven in, in terms of textures. For example, on this record one of the instruments we started out early on with was piano. A lot of people see The Cult as being purely a guitar driven band.”
It’s been loosely suggested that Hidden City is the third album in a trilogy, beginning with 2007’s Born Into This, followed by 2012’s Choice Of Weapon.
“The birth of The Cult in the 21st century really begins, to me at least, with Born Into This which was a really impulsive record,” Astbury said.
“We made it like we did when we first started. We made that record in like 30 days, from beginning to mixing.
“We demoed and wrote for 21 days then we jumped in and did 15 days in the studio, Britannia Row Studio, in London, which is Pink Floyd’s studio and with a producer called Youth who’s produced everybody from The Byrds to Primal Scream.
“Choice of Weapon was started in the high desert with Chris Goss, in the Joshua Tree area. And that was a lot more immersive, working with Chris. That’s why we went to the desert, to begin that record, a more ethereal way of working, a more intuitive way of working.
“And then Bob Rock came in and kind of guided it home, and we finished the record.
“In conversations with Bob at the end of Choice Of Weapon he said ‘I’d love to be involved at the very beginning at the genesis of the next record’.
“You know, all the time we were against the clock in terms of touring obligations or release date obligations. I mean, when you’re working with a label it’s sort of like, ‘ok, here’s the release date’ and you know you’ve got to be done by a certain period and that can sort of force your hand. But with this record (Hidden City) we wanted to take our time. “
The album evolved over two years with the band alternating between working on it for two or three weeks, then touring for six weeks, going back and forth.
“It gave a chance for the body of work to develop and evolve. There’s a lot in Hidden City. There’s a lot of layers, so many layers that we haven’t even gotten to with this record. It just keeps unfolding.”
Needless to say, over the course of their career, there have been numerous changes in the music industry and the world in general. All of it lingers in some way, possibly creeping in to a lyric on Hidden City or possibly an as yet unwritten song. When asking Astbury what changes he’s noticed many things jumped immediately to mind.
“Watching our human impact on environment over the decades.
“Experiencing the focus away from the best and the brightest to the celebration of celebrity culture. We celebrate ignorance, for the most part.
“Moving into realms of science that we’ve never been into before – the quantum level.
“There’s a spiritual revolution going on. There’s an existential crisis of like, you know, the meaning of life.
“So we’re rearranging our whole psyche in terms of what it means to be human, what are our fears and dreams, our aspirations, where are we heading? I think that’s why we’re in this sort of crisis right now where people are turning to distraction and escapism.
“It’s all in this record and if you’re prepared to look, if you’re prepared to stick with it, and listen to it, live with it, more shall be revealed.”
Astbury also perceived that there’s some amazing art being created simultaneously as a counterpoint.
“Even the new Star Wars movie grabbed me,” Astbury laughed.
“The themes are archetypal, these are global themes – the rise of the young heroine who goes to discover her father. The search for the father, the search for the mother, these are archetypal themes that I think we can all relate to as humans and I think they did an amazing job with that film.
“So, not to mourn the past, there is a great revival, though, in people questing for all kinds of lifestyle choices and we live in a much more mixed, cultural community now. We’re way more integrated and that’s great. And if we keep moving forward that’s a beautiful thing. That’s something I definitely embrace.”
The Cult will be performing songs from throughout their extensive catalogue including some new sure-to-become-favorites at the Grove of Anaheim on June 3.
“We always try to create a set that people coming through the door want to hear, songs that are familiar to them,” Astbury said.
“I like to leave everything on the stage, I like to come off the stage feeling depleted. It takes time to reconstitute that every day but that’s what we’re there to do.”