The Cure and My Life
Jul 02 '04
The Bottom Line The Cure's self-titled was an album that came exactly when it was needed, with words to fill my life.
There were things I never said in my review of The Cure's celebration of their quarter century as a band. Because? It's too personal to push on people inside a real review.
This album means a lot to me, more than can be expressed in a track-by-track analysis of the worth of their music. You see, Robert Smith accidentally (I'd love to say purposefully, but he doesn't know I exist) released his first album of all-new material in four years on my four year anniversary with my fiance. To make it even better, the commercial release of the first single, The End of the World, comes out on my 21st birthday, July 20.
This isn't the first coincidence in musical releases for me. For example, there was The Day of Gods back in 1999, when Nine Inch Nails and Type O Negative both put out their first new albums in years on the same day, September 21st, when these were two of the three bands (Marilyn Manson being the third) that reflected everything I'd ever wanted or needed from music. Incidentally, these were all three bands that my Mikhail brought into my life. Upon the release of The Fragile and World Coming Down on the same day (and Labyrinth, my favourite movie, being re-released on the same day!), I was convinced the music industry was moving just for me.
This feeling was enhanced by the fact that two bare months before, halo 13, the first new anything we'd heard from Nine Inch Nails since The Perfect Drug, came out on my 16th birthday. July 20, 1999.
This tops it, though. First all-new album in four years on our four year anniversary, with a song called Anniversary that says the word "year" four times.
Whew. Isn't that a little bit scary?
Of course, anyone who's heard the album may be wondering why I would put any importance from this album on my relationship. It's all about falling apart, a slow decay, the death of relationships, and drearily trudging on through life.
But that's the great thing about it. This album reflects not what Mikhail and I are living, but the life we fought to keep at bay. There have been rocky times, much more than either of us have ever wanted to admit as we forced ourselves to believe it was happiness and sunshine.
The album opens with Lost, which reflects Somewhat Damaged, the track that opened Nine Inch Nails' '99 mad opus The Fragile. The off, dissonant guitars and the jarring atonality reflect it almost perfectly. And neither Mikhail nor myself have waited with breath held so eagerly for an album since The Fragile.
Follow this with Labyrinth. The eastern edges to the music...in fact, the eastern immersion of the music... Eastern culture and music is my own personal obsession, and has been since my first year of university. I fought off any music that wasn't either eastern in influence or political, but as that was the years 2000/2001, you couldn't think eastern without getting political as the bombs started to fall and people started to die out there in the middle east. No music captivates me more or leaves me taken, or destroyed, or left assunder. All the miseries, the horror of realization, and the end of everything played out in that song leave me breathless.
Before Three reflects the real reason why I haven't written in so long--one of the many real reasons, actually. You can check out my Livejournal @ http://www.livejournal.com/users/anvrill/ and go back to the June 16th post to see full and detailed confessions, but let's just say that on my 20th birthday, straightedge was no longer a word even in my vocabulary, and from there things just got too interesting and overwhelming. The times Mikhail dragged his butt up out of California to come celebrate with me were overshadowed by excess, and however happy we were...there was something unreal about it.
The End of the World describes not us now, but us a year ago. That year almost broke us apart. We fought tooth and nail over the fact that I'd started smoking, and we were busy pushing each other away, not remembering to love each other enough through the fact that we were both falling apart in our own ways. The lyrics of the song moreso reflect what I was like in my more lucid moments, not what he was like. But then, I've always taken on the male role in our relationship. (Heh.) This song is an end that almost overtook us.
Then comes Anniversary. The song of redemption. Where she doesn't tell the whole truth (as honestly, I didn't), and he mistakenly lets her go (as honestly, he almost did). Four years are gone through in this song, and finally redeemed at the end, where Smith sings finally in the present of holding his girl, kissing his girl, and never, never never letting her go. It took us this long of a rocky relationship that we wouldn't accept or believe to save each other and save ourselves. This song...
This song will forever be my favourite by The Cure, I would think, as nothing has hit so close to home, but with a sense of hope remaining.
The song that follows...I wish I'd written it. Us or Them, Smith's first ever political rant. He rages against The War Against Terror, something I have been hit by since the Two Towers came down in my first month of university. I have written stories trying to show the broad picture, such as Boys Clothes @ http://www.geocities.com/authoress_blacksquirrel/lori/story/bc.htm, and have tried to talk to everyone I know about the detriments of fear and hatred. But Smith puts it more succinctly than I could have ever hoped to:
"I don't want you anywhere near me. Get your f_cking world out of my head! Oh, I don't want your Us or Them."
The next song is more for my best friend than me, but really, it's for both of us. We had moved out with the boy we thought would save us both, and really, we were both in love with him (though I was in denial about it). We never saw how abusive he was until it was too late, and it took us finding our strength together to finally push him out.
As he tries, over and over, to come crawling back, moaning that he's finally screwed up too badly and destroyed everything good in his life...we will remain, as Amber informs him that there is only one song he need look up to see exactly how she feels (and how I feel!) about it.
alt.end, with it's hollow but cheery hand-claps in the back, the first time Smith revels in the end. "I don't want another go around. I don't want to start again. No, I don't want another go around. I want this to be the end."
He may one day even get the message.
Follow this with a song that works very well for my earlier times with Mikhail. (I Don't Know What's Going) On. An obsession more than love, a little dysfunctional, maybe even a lot. This is love, but it's blocked and blocking.
Taking Off is finally something happy and real and pure. And while Smith is too scared to use the word "love" in this song (which sounds like a much newer, brighter, clearer version of High), I can hear the concept of love dripping off this in every single way. This is the passion of the moment, the purity of feeling, the knowledge of real love. And I want nothing more than to dance to this song with my love.
Never is another warning song of how things could have gone. But we need to reverse boy and girl again. Mikhail always tried harder, in my memories, to please me and love me, while I fought the entire time to need no one but him. Our story, fortunately, has a happier ending than "we will never be in love." In fact, the moment he gets his butt up to Canada for good...we'll be married.
The Promise is another could-have-been that I am glad beyond words never came true. It opens with a wail straight off Never Enough, which was my Cure song for years, and the guitars in the background are straight off The Kiss, which was a song reflecting the darkest nature of our very strange relationship. In the worst of times, I often promised light and happiness to Mikhail. But, luckily for both of us, he isn't still waiting in vain.
This album...I will never get over it. If I hadn't just recently woken up, I would have been able to get into this more, but... At least there's an honesty to early-afternoon sleep-fuzz (hey, it's my day off! I shouldn't have to be doing early-morning anything).
I am in love...
Both with Mikhail and Robert Smith. ;) Let's hope he doesn't get too jealous.
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Epinions.com ID:
anvrill
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Member: LL Hager
Location: Calgary, AB, Canada
Reviews written: 62
Trusted by: 14 members
About Me:
Musical addict, of the weirdest degrees.
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