Golden Earring - Cut (1994)

After spending much of the late '70s and the early '80s as a cult band, Golden Earring returned to an international level of popularity in 1982 with the hit single (and popular MTV attraction) "Twilight Zone." This song and seven others are featured on Cut, a solid album that found Golden Earring starting to deviate from the pop/rock formula they perfect on No Promises...No Debts and Prisoner of the Night. Like those albums, Cut works its way through a series of guitar-based rock songs built on strong hooks. However, the band allows themselves to instrumentally stretch out a bit on some of the songs this time out. The most notable example is the midsection of "Twilight Zone," where George Kooymans lays out an exploratory series of guitar solos that build to crescendo over the taut bassline provided by Rinus Gerritsen. The other songs on Cut aren't as tightly crafted and hook-laden as those on the last few albums, but there are still plenty of strong tracks: "Baby Dynamite" is a power ballad about a fame-seeking girl that is built on a nicely harmonized chorus and "Lost and Found" is a strong mid-tempo rumination on the end of a relationship that boasts an impassioned yet subtle vocal performance from Barry Hay. However, the best non-"Twilight Zone" track on the album is the least typical: "The Devil Made Me Do It" is a witty, fast-paced pop-rocker about love gone bad built on an eccentric but effective combination of mock-gospel call and response vocals and an energetic horn section. Some of the tracks fall short of the mark ("Future" runs a decent riff into the ground by failing to develop it in an interesting way), but the album contains enough strong tracks to make it worth a listen for the Golden Earring fan.