But when the music is loud, we all get down

The Cult proved a blast on Thursday night. It was pleasing to chalk up a new venue - Wolverhampton’s Civic Hall – and reassuring to realise how close said auditorium is to my home city of Merrie Gloucester. The concert showcased 1985’s classic Love album and the hits came thick and fast. Naturally, a highlight was the seminal She Sells Sanctuary but Nirvana, Big Neon Glitter and Phoenix all rocked triumphantly. Well-chosen and interesting video images accompanied the singing and the playing (being a champion of the smaller venue, I’m not used to all that multimedia malarkey) although at times the bleedin’ obvious was stated: during Rain there were some arty rain images, a wolf and a moon featured heavily during Brother Wolf, Sister Moon while the gathered crowd gasped at a montage of revolutionaries during Revolution. The band was tight and loud and cranked it up to eleven. The lead vocalist Ian Astbury was adorned with a Jim Morrison-esque beard and flowing locks; he spoke in an American drawl which was surprising for man born and raised in the Merseyside region. He was a bit silly. Billy Duffy, on the other hand, was a down to earth gentleman with his flat northern vowels and affable nature evident on the few occasions he addressed the throng. His guitar playing was fabulous; I’m not really a rock dude but I rated Duffy’s forceful and persuasive, er, axe-work. Some of the audience were old enough to know better; Gothic embellishments and styling are suitably distasteful at twenty but appear frankly ridiculous over the age of forty. Yuck.