Time’s Up

On Living Colour’s second album, Vernon Reid’s guitar tone was more biting and noisy in a post-Robert Fripp sort of way, while Muzz Skillings was slapping his bass even harder, but burying it deeper in the mix, and Will Calhoun’s snare had a sharp ring. The opening title track is a Bad Brains-esque blast of hardcore with an ecological message; “Type” is built around a dissonant, almost Greg Ginn-ish riff and needle-in-the-ear harmonics behind Corey Glover’s wailing chorus; while softer tracks like “This Is The Life,” “Love Rears Its Ugly Head,” and “Under Cover Of Darkness” explore alternative and R&B songwriting, and “Solace Of You” dips into West African highlife. Living Colour were stretching the boundaries of their sound on this record, and broadening their lyrical perspective to include Afrocentrism and some broad-minded statements about sexuality (“Under Cover…” includes a guest rap from Queen Latifah, and one of Reid’s wildest guitar solos ever) but they managed to keep it cohesive enough that it was always recognizably them.