Okay, so you're coming off an emotionally exhausting, drugged-out tour with your band, where drunken meltdowns and ugly, debasing antics were the norm. You've tried to disintegrate the group by releasing a single designed to eradicate your career, and are dumbstruck to realize it's actually helping your star rise. On top of this, you're filling in as a guitarist for another band, hopscotching from studio to studio, rehearsing, recording and taking drugs at an inhuman clip to stay awake, if not alive.

If you were a well-adjusted human being, you'd probably take a break from the music industry to recuperate and clean up. But if you were Robert Smith in 1983, you'd decide to shack up with Banshees bandmate Steve Severin, Cure drummer Andy Anderson, drop mountainloads of acid, and do your best to repurpose "The Yellow Submarine" with an '80s angst aesthetic. You'd realize that, under contract with Fiction Records, you really weren't supposed to be singing on this side project. So you'd audition an emotionally flat singer, Jeanette Landray, whose previous experience was as a dancer on BBC's Top of the Pops. Then, god help you, you'd release the result.

Sound compelling to you? Then you might have found a friend in The Glove's sole album, "Blue Sunshine." The title references an obscure b-film in which people who drop a particular strain of acid become murdering psychopaths a decade after their trip. The album drips with druggy menace and wide-eyed wonder in equal amounts. If you can get past Landray's hollering, you'll discover a real album here, one as fascinating as it is distressing. If you're the type that can't get beyond a highly unpolished voice, you'd do best to pretend this album never existed.

"Like an Animal," the opener and first single, is inspired by a newspaper clipping where a woman became obsessed with dropping heavy objects out of her window onto people's heads. You'd be hard pressed to realize this by the jumble of lyrics -- it starts out making a bit of sense, but soon devolves (or evolves, depending) into debased poetry. "Couldn't we just once leave her in bed?/Let the dry air cut her happy throat." These lyrics are sung by Landray in a style between Kate Bush and amateur hour, but Severin's distinctive bass and Smith's swoony ear for a good melody (with frantic Cure guitar) keep this one afloat.

"Looking Glass Girl" sounds like a held breath gently exhaled. There is a quiet urgency in the strings, strummed guitars, dreamy keyboards and hair-light percussion. The lyrics, again sung by Landray, include paranoid Smithisms like "We peel away like tinsel/Stick like splinters to the wall" and end with the horrifying "Whirl your see-saw arms and ride the Catherine Wheel," exemplifying the combination of child-like play and tortured dread that permeates this release.

"Sex-Eye-Make-Up" is one of the reasons to own this album. A dream-filled, sour (but melodic) tune about who knows what. This album can't be thought of in concrete terms, but more of as a Lynchian dream world where mundanity and menace co-exist. But unlike Kyle McLachlan in, say, Blue Velvet, I don't think the protaganist of this song (Landray again) is going to survive to see the next morning. "One more cigarette and the car burns slow/Burning like the body waiting at home/Throw out your teeth and call all your friends/Someone coughing took away my breath/Inches of glass all shiny and new/Screaming, laughing, f_cks me to death" It culminates in a solo by Smith as ugly and sore as those words.

"Mr. Alphabet Says" is another paranoid fantasia, this one sung by Smith himself. It plays minimal cymbal hits against a percussive piano melody, Severin's scavenging bass, and Smith's anguished vocal, singing things such as -- I'm not making this up -- "Don't be afraid/There's no marmalade." I fear I'm doing this album a great disservice by sharing these snippets of lyrics. You're probably thinking, what a piece of lazy, pretentious junk. Yes, it is, but that's the charm of it, and it's a charm that is conveyed much more in the experimental, try anything music than the tossed off, tripped out words.

"A Blues in Drag" is the first of three instrumentals on this CD (one of them is a tacked-on B-side), and jumps right out at you. Why? Because there's no silly lyrics marring the music, so you're left with an icy, echoed piano, with dissonant chords underlaying it and keeping everything off balance. A stand-out moment. Of course, this also shows that this album is meant for people interested in a little indulgence from Severin and Smith, if one of the stand-out tracks is an instrumental. So be it.

"Punish Me with Kisses," the other single pulled from this album, is an adult moment of clarity. The song is mournful without being overdrawn, the words follow a cohesive story of heading for a breakup, and the music is, for once, playing against Landray's voice in an expressive, emotive way. This sounds nothing like goth rock pretention, and thank god for that. "I wait for this forever, but we always fall apart/You want to hold me closer and secretly entice/You take the size of shadowed men/And punish me with kisses every night." Too bad one of Smith's and Severin's most mature songwriting moments has been buried on this obscure collection of music.

"This Green City" continues with the previous track's reflective, mournful feeling, and, because it's so expertly crafted, with all the right musical elements in place, it sort of bleeds into the wallpaper. Except for the druggy wood flutes, straight out of "Lament." And the guitar that sounds like a plane looking for a place to crash. "Stairs fall like jewels as we near the door/You fold through my arms and neck like crystal." It becomes another highlight.

"Orgy" has a psychedelic Eastern tinge to it, and brings the listener into a semi-trance. Which is clever of the boys, because the lyrics deal with horrifying sexual rage, the guitars are sour valentines and the wood flutes are back to itch your skin -- this is no place in which to drift away cozily. "A tongue explodes into my mouth/A taste of coma and tears." It's not some joyful ode to excess. It's cataloging the cost of hedonism. Landray's voice takes on a detached tone that even more perfectly suits the content, taking off the mask and letting her flaws soar.

Smith returns for "Perfect Murder," which sounds for all the world like a "Japanese Whispers" outtake. A rather good one at that, with a vague koto melody, whirling keyboard arpeggios, and Smith singing as if he's vaguely human, which is impossible, seeing how many drugs he's poisoned himself with by this time. "I reached out my hands and held the knife of ice/Very thin red water flowed underneath my skin." It's called blood, Robert. He's exhausted, and this pillow of a song marks the perfect place to find some rest.

"Relax" is another instrumental, this one too creeped out to follow its own instructions, a swirling mess of voice clips, guitars that sound like penetrating needles, and overlaying melodies that flit in and out of existence. A fitting way to close the album, rising to the surface from sleep.

But we're not done yet. There were two singles, so there's two B-sides, as well. "Mouth to Mouth" is a shimmering thing, with a distinct, memorable keyboard line and unmistakably Smith guitar construction. Landray seems out of place singing here, as the sound is so eminently Cure that it gives the effect of a karoake singer emoting without much technique over a song you've never heard before, and want desperately to make your favorite. That being said, this is another adult moment for the Glove, content to think in peace about a love away at home. "I laid with you for hours, staring at your face/I laid with you for you hours, remembering your taste." Gorgeous music. It's nice to see that not everything has to end in pain for Smith, Severin, and co.

"The Tightrope" is another instrumental, and could have backed one of the Cure's dream pop singles if Smith had let it. It has a playfulness to it, but also a barely concealed layer of grime. A keyboard plays what sounds like an ice cream truck pulling into a nearly empty parking lot to complete a drug deal.

We finish this release with the "Club? What Club?" mix of "Like an Animal," which incorporates a carnivalesque intro and crickets (perfect nocturnal music) before stomping and shaking the room to pieces with a hard-charging, re-engineered, percussive version that sounds like a lost '80s Cure classic, albeit with Landray singing.

Obviously, there's only a certain subset of people who will find this CD mesmerising as well as an experimental mess. I'm one of them. I appreciate that Smith and Severin were able to indulge their muses without catering to the expectations of their audiences. Yes, the lyrics could stand a few more hours in the oven, and Landray really has to go, but despite these flaws, the music comes through loud and clear. It says "Hello." It also says "Goodbye." It lets us know "I'm going places. Care to join me for a ride?"

Recommended: Yes