Cults’ music is a throwback, an enigma, sunny and soulful, something you might hear in San Francisco in the seventies, if you flipped through Joan Didion’s “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” really fast, if you stood for a while, maybe waiting for someone important, in front of a street glockenspiel player, and then gave the guy some cash when your lover didn’t show. You would walk home whistling that little glockenspiel line. You would think about driving somewhere far away, whose car you could borrow, who you would bring with you. When you got home you’d open all the windows and write a sad song with lots of echoey guitar, record the paranoid ramblings of some televangelist off your TV, sing/sigh some moody lyrics. That song would be “Go Outside.”
When you wrote “Most Wanted” you had to throw yourself back even more. It seemed like it would only fit in a dance hall. You would have to do a little dance with your hands on your hips. You would have to find someone to play upright bass. All your friends would come and dance with each other like high schoolers, never looking in each other’s eyes.
