There’s nothing gimmicky about The Cult.
Singer Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy, as The Cult, were born on the stage. With that sort of lineage, The Cult is revered for its concerts.
“The Cult are not one of those bands who go out there and need a hype guy to hype up the audience,” Astbury says.
“We just occasionally provoke them a little bit. There’s a frequency that comes through at some point, an implosion in the room. It’s quite well documented that we consider shows to be ritual space. We’re not taking your dollars and just jumping up and down. It’s never been like that — ever — for this band.”
The Cult will prove it at 8 p.m. Sunday, November 20, when it plays Wild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino. The band is touring in support of its latest album, “Under the Midnight Sun,” and the single “Give Me Mercy.”
The Cult formed in 1983 in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, and quickly scored hits like “She Sells Sanctuary” and “Love Removal Machine,” the latter of which hit the U.S. charts later in the decade. Astbury and Duffy are the longest-serving members.
Being inquisitive has kept Astbury inspired.
“I always look into what’s new,” he says. “I’m always reading. I read copious amounts. I prefer books to the screen. I do use the screen for things I’m unsure of.”
“Under the Midnight Sun” was recorded during the pandemic, when the musicians worked virtually to produce the tracks. The collection was produced by Tom Dalgety (Pixies, Ghost, Royal Blood), the first English producer The Cult worked with since 1985’s “Love.”
“The producer came over from England, while we were working in LA,” he says. “We narrowed it down to 12 to 15 pieces of music that we were very focused on. We made a few demos; they were inroads into evolving the songs a bit further.”
During the lockdown, Dalgety and Duffy returned to England. The backing tracks were recorded at Rockfield in Wales with bassist Charlie Jones (Robert Plant, Goldfrapp) and drummer Ian Matthews from Kasabian.
“I was working virtually with these guys,” Astbury says. “When we had the 10 to 12 backing tracks down, that meant we had something to work with. Once you have the backing tracks down, from there you evolve the top-end lyrical ideas and arrangements. That evolved over about 18 months.”
Being away from touring during the quarantine allowed The Cult to revisit the songs it had written to make changes.
“The songs had a lot more time to gesticulate, find their natural conclusion,” he says.
“With recording, you usually have very tight deadlines. With this, there’s an open deadline. Nobody could determine what was happening from one day to the next. If anything, it fired us up to keep ripping things apart and putting them back together again. We didn’t wait for the pandemic to stop.”
Astbury describes “Under the Midnight Sun” as an intimate project, one without “an army building a record.”
“We didn’t have 36 writers on a track, and that’s quite common now,” he says.
“We were open to trying different rhythmic approaches, textural approaches. We’re always trying to change it up. It’s got to flow, and this record flows. It really does flow. Even though it’s eight songs, it says everything it needs to say. It doesn’t go on in excess, especially in a time where excess information overload is pollutive. We were very conscious of that.
“But there’s a lot of open space in our music. Our shows don’t feel like entertainment events. They feel like gatherings.”
The Cult
WHEN: 8 p.m. Sunday, November 20
WHERE: Wild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino, 5040 Wild Horse Pass Boulevard, Chandler
COST: Tickets start at $55
INFO: 1-800-WIN-GILA, playatgila.com
