64. The Cult - "Under the Midnight Sun"

Let’s follow one curveball with another as we have the shock horror of The Cult making a pretty decent album. For a band whose recent live sets seem content to ignore everything that they created after 1989, it is quite a surprise to find them so creative and so seemingly current. “Under the Midnight Sun” sounds like the Cult but the Cult if they had been formed in 2022. Don’t worry this is not an embarrassing exercise in 60-year-old men trying to be hip and trendy, this is still very much a rock ‘n’ roll record but it is a rock ‘n’ roll record that is aware that the last 30 years have happened. Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy sound like they’re having fun. Under the Midnight Sun hasn’t got the air of a contractual obligation exercise and instead the impression is very much to all friends making music for the simple joy of doing so. And by doing so they have sculptured the first cult album in decades that is actually worth bothering with.