The Cure - 'The Cure' (Geffen / I Am)
4/5
By: Toby L
Drama, schizophrenia, psychosis, dodgy make-up - the components that first outlined The Cure's perennial genius are numerous and endless. Through their wayward career of almost 30 years (makes you sick, doesn't it?), the quintet have reached as much acclaim as distaste for their highly erratic, eclectic output.
But isn't that what artists are meant to do? That notion of challenging us? They are on their new eponymous album, at least. That much is certain. But it's a challenge we can tackle, a mutual one in which we all win: The Cure through way of an uncompromising, avant-garde mish-mash art that coats every track with an air of surrealism and compulsion in equal measure, and us in beholding the aural shudder of veterans maintaining their rollicking stamina even after so many years in operation.
Altogether, then: woo-hoo.
'The Cure' excels because it's recorded with as much brutality as love. The opening clasp of 'Lost' is ramshackle, live and raw, 'Labyrinth' is dark, deep and awash in its own instrumental Mogwai-worthy massiveness, and 'Before Three' is searing almost-pop, with those throttling guitars we all know and adore - recently seized by US/UK indie-upstarts Interpol and British Sea Power - and a turbulent Robert Smith series of yelps that'd awake a corpse. (In part, you can thank Ross Robinson for such frantic delivery - not only the producer-maestro responsible for persuading Smith and friends into another stint into the studio, himself at the helm, but also the honcho that's pushing the release through his own Geffen Records imprint, I Am. Bloody clever.)
So, Robinson is clearly a fan, and reacts affectionately and tenderly because of it. He's accentuated Smith's vocal on every track, from every rumbling yearn, to every soaring yell, in such a precision yet natural warmth that Robby might as well be shouting right next to us in the same environs. Musically, the band is at its most expansive and contrasting - 'Truth Goodness And Beauty' builds and throbs with gentle beauty, akin to the kind that modern heroes Bloc Party are gaining much aplomb for, while single 'The End Of The World' is a clattering rhythmic monster.
It then gets customarily bleak - the scattered, keyboard-y morbidity of 'Anniversary', the remote, angst-brood heaviness of 'Us Or Them' (Smith drops quite an exquisite contradictory clanger: 'There is no terror in my heart/Death is in us all' that typifies the experience), before the elevating guitars of 'alt.end' temporarily grant us salvation. Polishing it off is the quite fantastical vulnerability of '(I Don't Know What's Going) On', their closest to an anthem herein (and it's ravishing), the fervent, infectious strum of 'Taking Off', and the down-tempo flange/piano of 'Going Nowhere'.
Rewardingly to our subjects, the fact that any reference-points to this most iconic of institutions are of those that The Cure have been able to entertain, inspire and influence in more recent years is perhaps most indicative of their enduring legend and importance. 'The Cure' packs a punch, wipes your tear, and then repeats the whole encounter. Drama, schizophrenia, psychosis, dodgy make-up - they've still got it all, and like no other.
Artists in this article: The Cure
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