:: Living Colour - The Chair in the Doorway

Living Colour

Listening to Living Colour’s new album The Chair in the Doorway is truly a novel experience. You definitely don’t get what you bargained for. Maybe it’s their similarity in name to The Living End that makes you think they’re a group of young punk rock singers. Instead Living Colour are actually a Grammy award wining NYC rock band that formed in the late ‘80s and paved the way for a number of contemporary African-American artists to make it in the rock game. Oh and did I mention they were discovered by Mick Jagger and toured with The Rolling Stones? With such an impressive musical legacy, the boys of Living Colour are rock legends and their latest offering proves why all over again. The Chair in the Doorway is an almost unsettling listen. In ‘Young Man’ you could be forgiven for thinking Ben Harper was singing. Lead singer Corey Glover just sounds so much like Harper (or should I say Harper sounds like him?) that it’s freaky. And that’s not the only artist Living Colour has inspired or been inspired by. You can hear shreds of Lenny Kravitz whining guitar chords and irresistible funk tones in ‘Bless Those’. And you can’t help but get swept up in the Jimi Hedrix-esque multi-dimensional sound of ‘That’s What You Taught Me’. Every track on The Chair in the Doorway is inspirational. But the coveted should-be-immortalised-in-gold track has to be ‘Method’. Opening with a haunting play of shivering guitars, ‘Method’ slowly descends into a brooding lament of deep percussion and Glover’s sinister but completely seductive vocals. An irresistible listen, The Chair in the Doorway is classic Living Colour - so good you’ll want to start a religion around it.