POP REVIEW : Cult Reaches for ‘Heavy’ Rock but Parodies Itself at Forum

Spinal Tap has a new album about to come out, and it’s every bit as pompously funny as you’d hope. Really, though, the whole idea of Spinal Tap is nearly rendered superfluous by the existence of the Cult, which provides all of the dead-on rock ‘n’ roll parody with none of the parodic intent.

This town may not be big enough for the both of ‘em.

At the Forum on Saturday, singer Ian Astbury synopsized the Cult’s acoustic version of their song “Edie, Ciao Baby”--an unintentionally witty elegy for the late scenester Edie Sedgwick--as “pretty heavy.” The next song, the sing-along power ballad “Heart of Soul,” was going to be “pretty heavy too,” he added.

So heavy, in fact, that he scolded the crowd: “Phone MTV and tell ‘em to (expletive) play it.”

Yessir. Meanwhile, it was hard not to think of the Tap’s famous tribute to the Druids (“Nobody knew where they came from or what they were doin’ ”) when the Cult launched into “White,” a celebration--or was it excoriation?--of prehistoric, nature-loving hunter/gatherers, with the incantation to “let the music hypnotize your very soul.” This tune was summoned up by our on-stage spirit guides to take us “to the ancient place where we were animals, instead of this (blankety-blank)!”

Astbury’s twin torrent of foul language and quasi-mysticism--and what a combo that is--seems to have broad market appeal for both teen hippie wanna-bes and hooligans. These are the demographics the Cult most successfully unites, for all the talk of how the English-cum-L.A. band brings together the usually disparate hard-rock and alternative audiences. Native American spirituality, power chords, peace, love and lingerie as outerwear . . . this show had it all.

Astbury doesn’t make any claims to have been possessed by a dying Indian as a child, but he does invoke the drama-lovin’ spirit of Jim Morrison, vocally--this overstandard riffing that combines the simplest magisterial moments of Led Zeppelin with the Aerosmithian blues-rock that was already a big part of the L.A. scene by the time the Cult emigrated here in the mid-’80s.

Astbury has a definite dynamism on stage, which might easily be confused with charisma, were it not for his mood-breaking strings of between-song cliches.

Guitarist Billy Duffy’s talent for churning out blues licks has improved several-fold since the band first shed its psychedelia and hit the road as an American-style hard rock band about five years ago.

Unfortunately, the best songs this time were the same ones as five years ago: the supremely catchy raunch-rocker “Li’l Devil,” “Sweet Soul Sister” and the early-days holdover “She Sells Sanctuary.” The material has only gotten more pretentious and less punchy since then, with such current choices as “Ceremony” (“We are gathered here in a sacred place . . . Funky style music got you good now children”) and “Earth Mofo”--not to be confused with Jim Morrison’s mojo, which is definitely not rising here.

A keyboardist, bassist and drummer, all crackerjack, filled out the roster--and got to hold the stage as an instrumental trio for a few minutes when Astbury and Duffy momentarily departed.

For an act that succumbs to some of the worst indulgences of arena-rock, the Cult does deserve credit for its uncluttered stage design--though, frankly, a miniature Stonehenge or its equivalent might not have hurt.

Opening act Lenny Kravitz can’t really be said to be any less hokey than the headliners--not with his pleas (mostly unheeded) for the audience to join hands in solidarity, as if at a Diana Ross concert--and he shares with them a certain lack of warmth as a frontman that renders his universal-love exhortations less than inspiring. But unlike the Cult, he’s no one-trick pony, and his bag of homages--mostly to late-’60s and early-’70s flavors--has loads of irresistible craft.