Single-album tours a reall the rage nowadays,and sometimes just one album from a band will do nicely. Case in point: The Cult. Originally away-too-serious band called Southern Death Cult, the Yorkshire,U.K. quartet fell under the spell of macho arena-rock, and in 1987 they delivered the monster known as Electric. The disc was all bluster and a mile wide, with Billy Duffy grinding out the riffs and Ian Astbury playing the prince of darkness role so well that he later got invited to join the Doors. Most importantly, the album was fun: The band maintained a sense of irony throughout (as you’d better do, when you’re writing a song called “Love Removal Machine”), and were shameless enough to cover Steppenwolf’’s “Born to be Wild.” And the closing“Memphis Hip Shake” ranked with the finest, and most blatant, of all Zeppelin rip-offs.

Though it had zero to do with anything considered hip at the time, Electric proved a huge hit and arguably set the stage for the wholesale revival of arena rock as grunge, five years later. The Cult eventually got way too serious once again and spent the next two decades rewriting that album,with fewer hooks and less wit.But now the band (Astbury, Duffy and a latter-day rhythm section) is launching the “Electric ‘13” tour,playing the whole album and a few additional hits. Hardcore fans (every band has ’em) would disagree, but it will be all the Cult you really need.