Do you ever get the rage? Do you need a release for your pent-up frustrations? Then maybe it’s time you did something about it, and what better time than now to try Living in a Cult with The Bucky Rage.
If you’ve ever seen the band live, you’ll know they’ve got a reputation for anarchic chaos, taking to the stage in their luchador mascaras, with a resultant frenzied melee that leaves you in a state of confused bewilderment and elation, wondering just what it was that hit you. Pretty much the effect Living in a Cult will have on you too.
Is Living in a Cult a bad thing I think to myself as Shug’s familiar vocal rattles in my earphones, and an anonymous woman defends the bad rep of Hell’s Angels while, with a certain irony, I fight my way through the hoards of Jehovah’s Witnesses constantly blocking the way to and from Central Station as they completely ignore the couple of homeless people lying under threadbare sleeping bags in their eyeline…
If Eddie Cochrane found Three Steps to Heaven, The Bucky Rage are here to help you on your Three Steps to Rage! Step One: Find the Cult you love… Joining the Cult of Rage is a positive step on your journey to fulfilment. Step Two: Let the music in, don’t fight it, allow it to blacken your heart and corrupt your soul. Step Three: it’s time to “swear your heart, soul and access to your home bar to your saviours, The Bucky Rage” and your journey is complete.
What can you expect from your conversion? Living in a Cult takes it’s irreverent inspiration from across the great and good of the devil’s own music, rock and roll, taking in large swathes of sleazy garage rock and proto-punk, bathing it in the glow of the glimmering radiance of soul, and drawing inspiration from the desperation and pathos of country and western… chucking all the best bits into the mix and making it their own.
Despite my summation of the frenzied nature of The Bucky Rage live experience, the album opens in a restrained sedate manner with the gloriously laidback Snails, “I’ve got all the time… as I wait for you to come” sings Shug atop a dreamy psychedelic VU style riff. Did I hear you say you wanna go faster? Time to jump on the Waltzer as the band hit their stride and add fairground organ sounds to the mix. The albums title track has a suitably manic air as the flipped-out histrionic refrain encourages you to “join a cult”, before switching to the hypnotic driving rhythm of Hard Working Man.
The swirling slow psychotic psychedelic burn of Be My Bride builds to another deliriously unhinged climax, the hypnotic sixties psychedelia continuing into the suitably titled I Am Drug. Perhaps my favourite track on the album Buckle Up takes it’s blueprint from the roots of soul, with a hint of lover’s rock, and gives it a bit of a bluesy New York Dolls-esque makeover, the repeated coda of “you gotta buck up your ideas, or you’re gonna be sad” delivered with a real sense of poignancy. Tremendous.
Penultimate song Broken Down brings a distorted guitar and rollicking keyboard maelstrom to the party, complete with a howling hound backing, illustrating the huge helping of wry humour throughout this album. A fact illustrated again in the desolate pathos displayed on the country & western song that closes out the album, a tribute to Hank Williams in both title and style. The lyrics of I Saw the Light (But It Didn’t See Me) hint at Deliverance style backwater relationship…”I told her I loved her, my cousin smiled sweetly”… helping to close out the album in style.
Great review ae a tap band Neil. I luv their songs.