Living Colour

After a lengthy hiatus from recording, one of the most celebrated hard rock bands of the late ‘80s returns with a 16-track mixed bag of tricks that at times features flashes of the funk-rock brilliance witnessed on their 1988 debut, Vivid, and at others sounds like an experiment gone wrong. The disc starts out promisingly enough with the chug and groove of "Song Without Sin” and graduates to the speedy riffing of "A ? of When" before moving into the weird-core "Operation: Mind Control.” But then it becomes a hodgepodge of genre-bending misfire. The mellow groove of "Flying” is followed by the pseudo-electroclash metal of "In Your Name.” Then comes a cover of "Back in Black," which begs the question, what were they thinking? A couple more diamonds in the rough round out the collection but muddy production and a distinct absence of Vernon Reid's trademark guitar pyrotechnics leaves us underwhelmed to say the least. A shorter, more focused record with a little more attention to the sonic quality would have helped. And to think we waited nearly a decade for this.