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Album Review
by Tel Motspah
29-6-2004
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| The Cure find 'The Cure' in the past |
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The Cure: 'The Cure'
(Geffen)
The Cure - album No. 14 and then…
It may sound strange but The Cure can be nominated for the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. Formed over 25 years ago, ‘The Cure’ is their, well - Robert Smith and various line-ups - 14th album. Epic sounding, rocking wildish and open in feel: visceral, whistling guitars, feral synths and thunderous drums for Smith’s Gothic imagery/paranoia that often borders on [melo]drama.
The main subject is still juvenile obsession with alienation, sense of outsider-ness and anti-mainstream. The band has influenced an army of bands, from The Rapture to The Killers and God-only-knows-whom-else but then, a cynical editor of this site claims that the Smith’s best work was during his two tenures with Siouxsie and The Banshees.
It ain’t that dire but there are a few great songs here - ‘Lost’, ‘Us or Them’, ‘Going Nowhere’, ‘Labyrinth’ - and the record relies on atmospherics that tend to be homogenic. It is enough to know about the cover and think - middle-age. The artwork is designed by Smith’s nieces and nephews and it is like… very uncle-y, fact fans. Cool, it ain’t. Rob, a nice man and a good interviewee, is not a Smithsonian sage.
Not titling the album - for the first time in their career - indicates that the band feels to be at the new beginning. Well, it is return to something they’ve done already with a modest improvement. Actually the heavy producer, an unlikely collaboration on paper, Ross Robinson has truly managed to bring certain elements to the fore but this definitely remains Robert Smith’s disc. If you are a fan, then you get what you’ve longed for since the last [good] one.
Robert Smith has talked about disbanding this lot and going solo but keeps on backing on his word. The Cure may appear over the hil but are nevertheless far superior to Oasis, for instance, by several stadia*.
6/10
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* Stadium (pl. stadia] is the Ancient Greeks’ distance measurement equalling 607 feet or 184 metres.
Tel Motspah
29-6-2004
The Cure’s eponymous album is released 28 June 2004 by Geffen/UMG
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