Coloursøund

★★★ Coloursøund II INGROOVES. CD/DL/LP

The Cult’s Billy Duffy and The Alarm’s Mike Peters, back together again.

Forged “out of wedlock”, as Mike Peters describes it, Coloursøund’s raucous 1999 debut was made after he’d left The Alarm and while Billy Duffy was on a four-year hiatus from The Cult. Only now, after inevitable further sorties with the acts that made them, have the pair dusted down their histrionics for Coloursøund II, an unreconstructed hard-rock record that’s often gutsier than a butcher’s slop bucket. Though the objects and affiliations of Peters’ zeal remain fairly obtuse, the headlong flight of Paradise (Free People) stirs the blood, and on Lightning Strike, too, Peters’ voice sounds like it could crunch rocks. Duffy, meanwhile – still many folks’ idea of a guitar god in Platonic form – knows all the little tricks and licks that excite, and when to go Neanderthal (see Actions). Though the odd battle against cliché is lost, Coloursøund II wins the war.