Life was a long time coming.
Culture Club began work on a reunion album in 2014, recording a bunch of tracks with
Youth, but that project was scrapped by 2016. Instead, the group decided to retain some of the songs, pluck a few tunes originally planned for a
Boy George solo record, add some new cuts, and record all of them as
Life, their first album in nearly 20 years. Two decades is a long time and that distance seems even greater thanks to how
Culture Club faded after 1983's
Colour by Numbers, scoring some hits while
George and the rest of the crew figured out how to navigate their seismic international fame. The remarkable thing about
Life is how doubt never seems to be part of their equation, either in the composition or the recording. Everything on
Life seems considered and light, whether it's adopting relatively recent production flair or the many allusions to the past. Some styles may be retro -- there's some disco, Northern soul and
Motown, reggae and arena rock -- but the sensibility is modern, particularly in how certain contradictory sounds are woven together. Better still,
Boy George maintains his wit without avoiding feeling. His voice, a bit lower and gravelly after all these years but still powerful, gives this often slick music a real human dimension, and helps the album live up to its title: this is the music of a life, maintaining memory, focused on the future while living in the present. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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