I'm telling you, there's something about [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/en...]this review[/url] that I really like. It's not just that it confirms my own opinions, or that it makes me hopeful about The Cure's new album. Rather, there's something in the writing itself that I find really appealing. I think this is an exceptionally well written review. And I suppose it just confirms for me why Chris Heard is being paid by the BBC to write about music, and I am not. :|
Here's the review for those of you who refuse to click.
[b]In a world of uncertainty and constant change, there's something oddly reassuring about a new Cure album. [/b]
As English as late-running trains or rain at Wimbledon, in their subtle way they have come to represent that masochistic national trait that finds a strain of pleasure in the misery of it all.
You know where you stand with The Cure. After more than 25 years and over a dozen albums, singer Robert Smith still does paranoia and despair better than almost anyone in rock.
It's hard not to admire Smith's resilience or the consistency of his artistic vision.
In his middle years you might have expected him to be embarking on a gentler journey towards inner peace, yet the darker recesses of new album The Cure hardly point to a state of personal calm.
If anything, Smith sounds more anguished than ever - right from the first bars of opening track Lost, a harrowing reading of jealousy and loss in which he quietly pleads (and later wails): "I can't find myself."
It sets the tone for what is to follow, with Labyrinth treading a similarly claustrophobic path over Stooges guitars with its negative central theme: "It's not the same you. It never really was like this."
Fractured melodies and an air of lyrical pessimism - those essential Cure staples - permeate the next couple of tracks, too, and you soon realise this is no summer picnic for Britain's godfathers of gothic gloom.
"All I am Is ugly. Nothing I am is beautiful at all. I don't get this world," complains the narrator in Truth Goodness and Beauty. Out of context it is just another sixth-form diary rant, but in these hands it makes strangely compelling sense.
It's not all depressive and dissonant, though - although it mostly is. The pop alter-ego that produced such catchy singalongs as Friday I'm In Love and The Love Cats is alive and well in The End Of The World (an obvious single), Taking Off and alt.end.
[b]Epic [/b]
Meanwhile, the stirring Us Or Them, driven by classic rock riffery and an impassioned vocal, appears on one level to be a comment on the current world situation: "There is no terror in my heart. Death is with us all."
The Promise is a languorous 10-minute epic with a feel of Berlin-era Bowie/Iggy, while the album's closer Going Nowhere recalls the mellow piano disquiet of the band's 17 Seconds period.
The record is engrained with echoes of The Cure's stylistic past - from the quirkiness of The Head On The Door to the (more prevalent) isolated mood of Disintegration.
Even the children's painting adorning the cover takes on a sinister edge. The sun is out but there seem to be clouds overhead and portents of doom on the horizon. How very Cure. [/i]
posted by: lindy (reply)
post date: 07.24.04 (7:23 am)
The Cure is relevant again... I should say. I lost dear Robert along the way, looking to break the cycle which his music points to, but should I leave this great love behind to do it? Nay, I say! Thank you for the revelation. I am about to embark on the second leg of my Cure affair and this one threatens to be even longer than the first, and that's saying something! lol. Beautiful.
As English as late-running trains or rain at Wimbledon, in their subtle way they have come to represent that masochistic national trait that finds a strain of pleasure in the misery of it all.