The Cure - s/t
(Geffen)
Well, what have we here? A quarter of a century after creating, perfecting and then abandoning that silly “gothic” moniker, one of the last bands standing from the NWOBPR (New Wave of British Punk Rock) have jumped the Elecktra ship that helped launch them in America and signed with crosstown rivals, Geffen. All I can say is Elektra’s loss is Geffen’s nightmare, for, aside from Bloodflowers, this, the band’s fifteenth album (excluding numerous “best of” collections), may be the second worse release in their entire catalogue (following the universally reviled The Top.)
The creepy, crawly, screaming opener “Lost” sounds like an outtake from Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (along the lines of “The Snake Pit”) and things don’t get any better with Robert Smith’s heavily distorted, muffled, tuneless vocals on “Labyrinth.” But then just when we start to be overcome with the cold grip of fear that we might be saddled with another shitstorm along the lines of The Top, Smith & Co. whip off one of their patented pop confections with the catchy melody and gorgeous descending guitar riff of “Before Three,” one of their best songs in years. Matters continue to improve with the playful “The End of The World,” complete with goofy Ramones-meet-The Beach Boys “ooh-ee-ooh” backing vocals and another killer melody on par with “Friday I’m In Love,” right down to Smith’s soaring, castrato vocal coda. And “Anniversary” is another one of Smith’s tearjerking, confessional weepers that worked so well on Disintegration.
However, just when there’s hope that The Cure’s pop side may win out over Robinson’s heavy-handed sludgy production, the vitriolic, foul-mouthed horseshit of “Us Or Them” comes along to burst the listener’s bubble; but then the stale taste of defeat is quickly washed away and flashes of their earlier brilliance trickle through on “Taking Off,” a swinging, upbeat headnodder reminiscent of the good old days when Smith was at the peak of his songwriting powers and blessed us with the brilliant trilogy of Head On The Door, Disintegration, and Wish. While they’ve fail to achieve such grandiose heights on anything they’ve done since, this is at least a slight improvement over the depressingly awful Wild Mood Swings and Bloodflowers, but I still suggest you avoid this wildly uneven tug-of-war, an ultimately very boring, disappointing set.
Perhaps the album’s most telling lyric appears in “alt.end”—“It’s only that it’s over and done for me/It’s already been and gone/And I don’t want another go around—I want this to be the end.” After all the threats and hints that Smith was going to disband The Cure, perhaps it’s time to take his own advice and hang up his six-string and fade quietly into the background and rest on his laurels. They’ve done well: at least half a dozen terrific albums, several sets of genre-defining trilogies (including the “suicide” trilogy of Faith, Seventeen Seconds, and Pornography) and an entire world of black-clad, make-up wearing gothic ghoulies hanging on their every move. While this is certainly not the swan song we want to remember them by (and fans looking for closure on their Cure catalogue are well advised to hunt down the B-sides box Join the Dots), I think it’s time to quit before they do any irreparable damage to their legacy.
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