Many THE CURE compositions were inspired by Robert Smith's dreams - dreary or endearing. Remember All Cats Are Grey. Or if you prefer, Lullaby. The liquidity and cinematic allure of dreams seem to fit this band's records as much as another Morphemic band - R.E.M. Especially in what regards The Top, a long nightmarish bad trip, but one can't help but think of Faith's slow depression, Pornography's violent outbursts and, of course, Disintegration's epic decadence. THE CURE used to be an atmospheric Post-Punk band - the greatest of them all, for many listeners and 1980s nostalgias.
So I noticed their new record entitled 4:13 Dream and I wondered what kind of dream is it about. I was enthusiastic about the prospects of a new THE CURE record in the 3rd millennium. After all these Emo years Robert Smith remains one of the compelling figures of Rock/Pop.
Smith said so many times THE CURE would split one could arguably indulge in such self-denial. In 1984, 1989, 1992, 1996, 2000...There always seemed to be more room for THE CURE. It is said their 2004's eponymous album was a creative rebirth, with Smith sounding positively rejuvenated.
Often I play with my cat, whose name by brother took from Tibetan Buddhism. She likes the exercise, she's charming and playful, but often her claws end down in someone's hands. I know she doesn't know what she's doing. It is as if cats lived in a daydream and we are their dreams. If she could have understood, she wouldn't anyway. Cats play with us whereas we think we are playing with cats. Only us bear the resulting scars.
4:13 Dream resemble this unbalanced logic of being someone else's dream and, thus, its emotions and messages are fading and emerging without much care, even though our subject in question remains compellingly charming and lovely - and bearing strange names. He/she may hurt us occasionally, but not due to bad feelings of any kind, it is just an open-ended game in which violence and emotion, on the one side, bear no lasting effects and are unconsciously distilled, but on the other hand, they are quite real.
Smith bears his cramps on sleeve. A crocked hoarse says this is a man in his 40s, with more than his fair share of deception and enlightenment left behind. The songs sound larger than the modest passion that fires many performances here. Songs suffer in comparison to other THE CURE records and listeners are left in a blurry crossroad of competing claims and sketches of past and present sonorities.
4:13 Dreams may be THE CURE's lamest album. Like an Emo take on Disintegration (check the sleeve), it is bombastic, filled with extended songs, imbued with a theatrical sense of ambition and space. The record's messages are scattered across several sparse, unfocused tracks, with floating emotions vaguely conveyed through lazy gurgling synths, sheets of lilting guitars, monolithic basses from Simon Gallup and half-moaned vocals from an accommodated Smith.
In this sense we get Disintegration in reverse. The album seems unceremoniously assembled, maybe during Smith's last sabbatical, with loose jams cut loose for CD/MP3 release. The effect is disarming, but the exercise is playful. Arguably, we will be waiting to be Smith's lovely cats once again in the near future.
In the haphazard logics of dreams, some references are more striking than chronology. So where do we start? Why not anywhere right now?
The Only One is a straightforward Pop song with melodic undertones, like THE CURE from 1987, only shallower in purpose. THE CURE always hinted at the act of love with intoxicating lyrics but there the many things that predate dreams become evident:
Oh I love oh I love oh I love What you do to my head When you pull me upstairs And you push me to bed
Smith, a man whose tormented voice filled uncountable teenage depressions, now is firmly entrenched in wet dreams. This fleshy, unambiguous affair is disarming for old school THE CURE:
It's so extreme Yeah it gets wetter every day I stay With you it's like a dream
The Reasons Why is another entire matter, as if THE CURE was reborn in Chicago circa 1997. A companion to SMASHING PUMPKINS' Adore, The Reasons Why presents liquefied basses and bleached choruses colliding with Smith's emphatic euphoria. Lyrics are more affected boredom than genuine menace:
I won't try to bring you Down to my suicide
It feels as if the retreat to oblivion shortened the controversy about someone putting and end to his/her life. But the singer gets nastier and more stubborn:
I wont' beg to put you down About my right to suicide If you promise not to sing About the reasons why
The interesting contrast between the aggressive (in an Emo way of going about the things) sonority and the despondent lyrics make this humble song a more interesting affair than The Only One.
Another track is entitled Freakshow. More frantic sonority, some compressed screaming guitars, some singalong choruses, some underpinning paranoia. Dreams are a metaphor for losing sense in this array of stressing sonorities and jarring vocals.
I can't believe it I must be dreaming She turns the sound down Says I am heaving This is a freakshow And I am screaming
The track is 3 minutes long and doesn't promise a resolve to the singer's love tribulations. 4:13 Dream is an unipolar world in which one witnesses the effects of decaying relationships and unexpected displays of sweaty egotism. It is as compelling a description of living past 9-11 as, say, BRITNEY SPEARS' massive workaholic delirium. It sounds as if Smith and SPEARS met in some strange cosmic crossroad - only a dream:
Oh it's insane She shakes like a freak Stuck in the middle of the room For a week Looks like the only way to get on the beat Is take her up on how to swing But I am missing my feet
All of a sudden we are brought to the slow doom of a typical 1980s THE CURE recording, the sprawling, warm and fuzzed landscapes of Underneath The Stars. Once again with the weight of the world on his shoulders, languishing in melancholia, with crunching, sparkling guitars underpinning his pancake, Smith indulges in epic romanticism and leaves all funereal expectations behind.
Floating here like this is with you Underneath the stars, alight for 13 billion years The view is beautiful, ours alone tonight Underneath the stars
The strengthening tone of lyrics contrasts with the sullen, stark proceedings, as if Smith paid to much attention to old RADIOHEAD, nowadays considered by him to be a band of fools, who pay too much attention to peer-to-peer file exchange instead of old groins, hearts and souls. This THE CURE recording becomes larger than its contradictions and references - Smith barely articulates his caress, fighting the downer surroundings, culminating in an outburst of galactic proportions, an angry apex. We can still dwell in love.
After Underneath the Stars, stakes are high. The Hungry Ghost bears riveting acoustic guitars but fells prey to odd references and, yet, it is the closer THE CURE gets to old Britpop, with clear-cut production and big choruses. It is a walking contradiction and by doing so, it resembles the overlapping aesthetics of dreaming:
All the things we never know we need Looks like we get them in the end Measure time in leisure time and greed And by the time we get to spend A floating bed A head of stone A home plugged into every phone Kimono coral floral print Exclusive tint and cut reclusive
Unprecedented pragmatism haunts this THE CURE recording, as if they were consciously striving for world adulation after so many years of affected refusal. It can also be Smith ageing and reconsidering his recalcitrance, in muscular fashion, strained voices and Hard Rock guitars, reverbing and pushing forward the unexpected intent of bowing down to the pursuit of happiness at any price. What about "artistic integrity"? It is like waking up from the hangover of a fallen dream:
No it doesn't come for free But it's the price We pay for happiness
The Perfect Boy arrives as another melodic post-Punk straightforward ballad. With guitars exhausting their fumes and Smith straining his voice to the breaking point once again, the recurrence of dreamlike ambiences shines thru and thru the mist of uncertainty, lyrics apparently reversing Kurt Cobain's All Apologies in escapist fashion:
You and me are the world She said Nothing else is real The two of us Is all there is The rest Is just a dream
The track is so melodically coherent its modesty in the band's canon becomes almost a virtue. And eventually Smith reveals in his thorny skepticism, yet full of humanity, a passionate reply. It falls short of perfection but it is nevertheless compelling: Yeah me and you are the world I said But not the only one I need The two of us Is never all there is That doesn't happen For real If it was Meant to be us It was meant to be now Don't see The sense in wasting Wasted time If you're so sure About this .... Well then tonight You're mine
A song entitled Sleep When I'm Dead? It almost makes for a THE CURE career summary. And fortunately the song does - some - justice to such a prospective ambition. Arriving out of the blue with eerie minor notes (cousins of Faith) and Smith in his full disembodied glory, then adopting a crisp post-Punk avidness that sounds nothing short of skeletal Funk. This is an overtly "adequate" song full of distinction, as a wormhole of a dream bringing us back to charted territory - even though lyrics just revolve in the wilderness of familiarity:
Sleep when I'm dead, you angels I'll sleep when I'm dead, I said Sleep when I'm dead, you angels I'll sleep when I'm dead, I said Sleep when I'm dead, you angels Well until then...
Smith is eventually p*ssed-off and awaits revenge in the face of external criticism (from the "angels", one guesses). Getting older doesn't equate cooling down. Smith reinforces his credentials facing competition from younger rebels. One of his most direct and, unfortunately, trite set of lyrics is intended to say just that. The indulgence diminishes the merits, and the pleasures, of going back to basics, of recalling several THE CURE highlights from the last 25 years. It also gets slightly preachy:
Give it to the chick And see if it ticks Give it to the kid See if it sticks Give it to the wonderful, wonderful me I'll let you know on my return just how it is With all the other boys and girls
Squeakily electronics collide with Arena (detuned, distant) guitars in another nostalgic dream. It is Switch, it could have been Mixed Up, Retreat, Never Again. Gurgling Madchester and cut-and-paste Post-Punk overlap Smith's uncertainty running rampant, bored, elliptical, eventually a conscious drip paint of stress and conformity, a Technicolor nightmare.
Sometime it seems I stop being myself And without a word Turned into somebody else Full of wishes want dreams And desires For a life Of conceit and deceit And repeat and rewrite
For most of their journey, THE CURE had clear-dark dynamics at the core of their sonority. In 4:13 Dream we found plenty of deceptive limbo - a monotonous, seamless ocean of studio trickery disembodying the confessionals instead of bursting through the songs' skeletons with romantic, fatalistic electricity. Underneath the Stars was an exception. The Hungry Ghost, too, in unexpected ways. And Switch is the third moment of age-old truth here. Cascades of disjointed nodes of sound, stitches of riffs, broken beats, gloomy harmonies, lousy guitars, incessant percussion mirror the fragmentary self, delving in the post-modern contradictory zeitgeist.
Not sure who I was Before this me and I changed But I know this me now Is not really the same...
Friends are as strangers And strangers as friends And I feel like I'm wired in a why Yeah my friends are as strangers And strangers as friends And I feel like I'm lost in a lie
And every day my world gets slower and colder and smaller And older and lower And every day My treat gets closer to trick Yeah every day my world gets slower And colder and smaller And older and lower
By doing so THE CURE finds its own deranged spirit in fine form-substance coincidence. Not brilliant, not that inspired, just eloquent, just stressing a point made so vehemently years ago it seemed to have lost its relevance:
And I'm tired of being alone with myself And I'm tired of being with anyone else Yeah, I'm tired... Like I'm sick
Another retro dreamscape is invoked by the dobro and slide harmonies of Sirensong, an offshoot of 1992's Wish. A meta-textual song, in what regards depicting the siren instead of just falling prey to her inexorable voice, is a window-dressing for unabashed romanticism. Smith, the hole-hearted Goth, once again depicts being with someone as being just like Heaven, in a warmer tone:
It could've been her golden hair That turned my head I didn't look to stare Like I was hypnotized But I was fixed On how she pointed slowly down And low I sank And still without a sound The world was far away And I was tricked
And as in Japanese Whispers, THE CURE shows delicacy to be an eloquent signifier. The song reveals the anguished heart of the Goth forefather, disguised as a fairy tale. Ordinary decisions that turn our lives inside-out. If music could match the whimsical lyrics (music is fairly ordinary here), it would have been a latter-day triumph:
She sang "Tell me you love me And beg me to stay" She sang "Tell me you love me Before it's too late" She sang "Give me your life Or I must fly away And you will never hear this song again... "
Floating like an empty vessel, THE CURE once again delves in indulgent decadence, this time closer to ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN's oblique expressionism rather than either Emo affectedness or RADIOHEAD form over substance, with hazards of Industrial found sounds hammering on tides of cringing synths:
Yeah Ive been this way before But something down here changed The spring sun hanging slower Colder in the sky And your voice sounds strange Your voice sounds strange
Smith reminds us that he has dreamt it all decades before cold synths and disjointed melodies overcompensated for rehashed depression. He does his best to convey an alarm call, another abrupt awakening, a literal Scream, as in Switch, name-checking one of his favorite bands, SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES:
Its like twisted out I know Now I can't wake to Break apart this dream Winter sun hangs weaker Older in the sky And you start to scream You start to scream
Initially an indulgent record, 4:13 Dream now bears the marks of some dreary substance we have extracted from Smith's psyche, alternating a rotting crest of illusions and a revolving door of romantic disparage. It sounds worthy the efforts. Even funny.
But if one fairy tale is good, two are a mixed blessing. The Real Snow White claims an ethereal Post-Punk terrain to build a rather intriguing portrait of a deceptive woman.
Oh yeah! It's only for the night And I will give it back tomorrow I swear She can barely breathe Don't stare I know the dress is tight But it was all I had to wear Give me what I need Please share You know it's only right And I would never lie to you I wouldn't dare...
But the disjointed melody and loose rhythm play for a chaos theory instead of a wormhole of sonic mystery. They deprive the song of its dreamlike ambitions, reaching a flesh and blood plateau of affectedness. It ends up a pointless exercise in literate conformity. The twist from fairytale to day-to-day social commentary dries up the allure. The Real Snow White is the real downer.
AAAIIIIEEE! For service with a smile I have to walk in on my hands and roll for free You say it's all the same Ennui... You're not the real Snow White The real Snow White is on my knee I didn't need to get ID It's simply minimum height And getting all dressed up In seven ways to please Yeah
Strangely affecting enough, THE CURE chose a traditional Goth song to bookend this uneven 4:13 Dream. On the one hand, Underneath the Stars. On the other hand, symptomatically titled It's Over. A guitar-laced litany of suffering flows from the outpouring misery detour. With a steady cavalcading bass and frantic pumping. It's Smith and company laying bare their soulcraft. No dreams anymore. No arcane mannerism. It's the aftermath punching at your face.
I get up and it's over It's always over It's raining and I'm burned And it's late and you're gone
The greatest set of lyrics in the whole album arrive at the very last moment, because as in Maybe Someday and '39, Smith is no longer hiding under his pancake mask - or layers of pancake. THE CURE plays as a band and the cogency, the vehemence of the self-deprecating lyrics becomes all the more poignant:
A nagging sense of shame I can't explain An acrid taste of smoke and blood And tears and drugs And every inch of me is raw
Misery sometimes is a reasons nice enough to craft great music and THE CURE seems to have rediscovered their reflective pilgrimage of suffering - and may be indulging at it, but speakers will blow anyway. Confusion makes sense because disillusion operates. Ever changing moods make sense because disarray is the day after of dreaming. Suffering is compelling because anything else is as torn apart as the self itself. And that assures another THE CURE record in the near future:
And it's always f*cking over It's raining and I'm blind And it's late and you're gone I can't do this anymore I can't do this anymore
That makes all the more intriguing, even bizarre, the morosely titled This. Here and Now. With You. A juvenile romp preceding the suicidal spree? THE CURE has been a bipolar band in the past (Wild Mood Swings) and here they display this incoherent, kaleidoscopic side of their inner divide. A vaudeville-like rhythm and a moony Smith call for the forgetting of all things, past and future, as in a never-ending fascination, a romantic rapture on time and space (compare with Underneath the Star's cosmic acquiescence):
This Here and now With you
Oh please don't ask me who i am Or when and where my life began Or why i ended up like this or how Don't ask me what i was before If i was anything at all Its nothing you can know About me now
Again strained and ecstatic, Smith reaches stratospheres of oblivion, melting down in love-saying, language turned a merry-go-round of protection and intimacy. If only music could match that enthusiasm...
You hold my spinning head to stare And strip me bare of memory Your black eyes burning into me So slow The sounds and lights and others fade And fall away in symmetry Your black eyes burning hungrily And unafraid I know
And he finally bows down to dreams, incoherent as they may be, better than unchained realities, something to live, rather than to die, for. He remains tied to his ego but he lets his ego afloat in the space of never die, of never getting older, of never getting better or worse. It is, strangely enough, the closer he gets to a religious experience - this man that said starkly "nothing is left but Faith". Optimism reigns in the voice that used to say "It doesn't matter if we all die". The song is a fairly regular affair but words get beyond the sound. So? Live and let die. See ya.
Everything I ever dared forget is here Too scared before I never let Tonight be all I need Everywhere I never tried to get is here Too tired before to ever let Tonight be all I feel Every time I ever thought regret is here Too caught before I never let Tonight be all I dream There isn't any yesterday Tomorrow starts a day away
* * * * 1/2 Underneath the Stars * * * The Only One * * * 1/2 The Reasons Why * * * Freakshow * * * 1/2 Sirensong * * 1/2 The Real Snow White * * * * The Hungry Ghost * * * * Switch * * * 1/2 The Perfect Boy * * * 1/2 This. Here and Now. With You. * * * 1/2 Sleep When I'm Dead * * * * The Scream * * * * 1/2 It's Over
In a radical move the new album 4:13 Dream was performed in its 13 song entirety by The Cure 2 weeks prior to release at a live broadcast MTV event in...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.