Old Music: The Cure - Disintegration

It probably surprises some people when I tell them that The Cure’s Disintegration is one of my favourite albums of all time. After all, this dense, dark, often self-pitying and claustrophobic record is hardly the stuff of buoyant pop music that many people would probably associate me with. Yet pop has a huge part to play here. Because it was through pop that I found The Cure.

The memories are distant now, but I have hazy recollections of first hearing the The Lovecats one summer on a friends Walkman on a summer school coach trip to Guildford Lido. I also remember being transfixed by the Close To Me video on Saturday morning kids TV where the whole band appeared to be shoved in a wardrobe and pushed off a cliff. Both of these tunes are very much pop songs, albeit wonky slightly left of centre pop songs. Yet pop nonetheless.

However, the first time The Cure came to really mean something to me wasn’t until 1987 when they released their album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. The happy thrills of the blaring horns on Why Can’t I Be You and the bouncing bass of Just Like Heaven, a song that even now has the potential to get alt-kids flailing around the indie disco dancefloor, may have drawn me in, but it was the darker, sludgier stuff such as the writhing uncomfortable Snakepit and the album’s title track that kept me coming back for more. “Kiss me kiss me kiss me, your tongue is like poison, so swollen it fills up my mouth,” sang Smith on that one, a lyric that was both vulgar, sexual and comical all at the same time.

It was that darkness that was about to envelop Robert Smith for his next record, and despite 1989 being a time in my life full of joy, excitement and endless possibilities, Disintegration’s self-loathing  and intense sense of loss found a huge place in my heart and still does to this day, even though I'm a reasonably upbeat and positive thinking person. 

Written against a backdrop of Smith being about to turn 30 as well as the tension and decline of friendship between him and band member Lol Tolhurst (“I was determined to involve everybody but Lol’s various addictions were really taking their toll,” Smith has been quoted as saying of the recordings) Disintegration certainly isn’t what you’d normally define as a pop record. Yet it became the band’s most popular record, hitting number 3 in the UK charts, going double platinum in America and spawned The Cure’s biggest hit singles in both the UK and the States (with Lullaby and Love Song respectively).

And there lies an important factor, something that is often missed about this incredible long-player. Despite Disintegration being an album that sounds not only as if it was born out of despair, but is despair itself, there is still within it a heart of pop. Not everyone could see that though, particularly The Cure’s label, who were less than enthusiastic. “I was confident that, although the overall mood of the album was pretty downbeat, there was so much strong immediate melody and interplay in songs like Pictures Of You, Lullaby and Love Song the record company couldn’t help but recognise Disintegration as a perfect Cure album, it was a bit of a shock to find they didn’t” Smith recalled on the inside cover of the remastered deluxe version of the album.

Smith was of course proved right. His label might not have got it, but fans did. The Cure was connecting and growing their audience. “We weren’t attracting or maintaining someone else’s mainstream crowd, we were creating and nurturing our own,” Smith explained. It’s something The Cure has continued to do to this day. When the Guardian recently criticised Smith for playing huge long sprawling sets, fans were quick to point out how the reviewer just didn’t understand what The Cure was about.

So what is the attraction of Disintegration? For me it’s because it’s what every great album should be - a complete body of work, with every track sitting perfectly in the right place. But more than that, if you’ve experienced love, from its heady joys, to the pain of breaking apart, you’ll be able to connect with this record. It’s as sad, intimate, plaintive and beautiful as any long-player I’ve ever experienced.

Writing about individual songs feels wrong, such is the completeness of it, but if I had to pick three defining tracks then the first would be Plainsong, the opening number. It’s not just a song but an event in itself. Starting quietly with soft chimes it leads you (as the original accompanying sleeve notes suggested) to turn up the volume, before booming in with gothic synths, tumbling drums and despondent guitars, setting a majestic tone for what is to come. ”I think it’s dark and it looks like rain you said, and the wind is blowing like it’s the end of the world you said,” Smith sings, his words echoing around the space in an almost dreamlike state.

My second choice would be The Same Deep Water As You. A sombre nine and a half minute soundtrack featuring the sound of a storm and Smith singing of kissing goodbye before he sleeps, it’s both gorgeous and unbelievably sad. It’s easy and lazy to stereotype this song as being one for teenage goths to listen to in their bedrooms, but it’s so much more than that. It can be interpreted in so many different ways lyrically, but however you read it, the music is something to lose yourself in.

The third song I would choose is the title track, where the newly married Smith dives in with a wail of torment and cold-heartedness: "I never said I would stay to the end, I knew I would leave you with babies and everything.” It ends with him repeating the flat-out heartbreaking line of “both of us knew, how the end always is.” A barrel of laughs this song most certainly isn’t. There’s no chorus as such, no happy ending and it clocks in at over eight minutes. You can understand why Smith’s label didn’t get it.

What’s remarkable about Disintegration though is that as it gets closer to its thirty year anniversary it still sounds remarkably fresh, still gloomily intense and importantly is still a record I can listen to from start to finish and feel raw emotion from. It’s for that reason that I feel certain that the word masterpiece sticks.

Later this year Robert Smith and his cohorts will play Bestival for the second time. It will be the seventh time I’ve seen them live. If they play anything from Disintegration there will inevitably be goosebumps on my part, maybe even more.

The Cure - Pictures Of You (From Disintegration)

Music That Made Me #13 - The Cure - Lullaby

Some people are confused by my taste in music and subsequently what Breaking More Waves covers – from commercial pop to folk to more experimental and darker sounds. I’ve never been one for embracing musical snobbery or singularity in any way and the notion of only listening to music that is ‘cool’ is pathetic and shallow – coolness is transient – todays cool is tomorrows naff.

If there’s any one band in this series that defines those qualities it’s The Cure. From the dark dense wash of the Pornography album, which opens with the line “It doesn’t matter if we all die,” to the smiley optimistic chart-bound sounds of single Friday I’m In Love, The Cure are a band who have always done exactly what they wanted, embracing a myriad of styles from commercial to post-punk to goth irrespective of what is cool at the time. It’s this ideology that appeals to me. Their music makes me want to dance in the rain.

My favourite album by The Cure is Disintegration. In fact it’s one of my favourite albums of all time. If you've never heard it it really is essential listening. Ironically, despite Disintegration being highly introspective, depressing and gloomy in its nature it became the bands biggest commercial success. It's an album to really immerse yourself in, even if by doing so you're enjoying wallowing in someone else's deep despair.

I saw the band tour the record and even although we had seats at the very back of the auditorium the sombre beauty of the music and moody lightshow completely enveloped me. Tracks such as The Same Deep Water As You and Plainsong were magnificent in their out-of-reach darkness and Lullaby was a hauntingly sinister pop tune that perfectly merged commercial nuance with something from the shadows.

In all honesty it would be quite possible for this series of Music That Made Me to just include 52 songs by The Cure and it is a tough choice just choosing one, but Lullaby is of such perfection that it’s a necessity that it is chosen.

This September The Cure will be playing a two and a half hour show headlining Saturday night at my favourite music festival, one that I have a special association with having been to every single one since the first – Bestival. You can guarantee that when Robert Smith walks out on stage, for me, it will be just like heaven.

The Cure + Franz Ferdinand + Crystal Castles + White Lies @ London 02 Arena

In a recent post we wrote of how the NME of today is a changed beast from that of yesteryear, run by an editor who talks of growing the brand. The fact is that commercial reality is something that the NME has to contend with. Sales of the publication continue to decline, now down to less than 50,000 a week, and like Top of the Pops there could soon be the day where there is no NME on the newsagents shelves. The brand however goes from strength to strength. People may not be reading the NME, but they like the gigs they put on. Tonight the 20,000 capacity London 02 Arena plays host to the NME Big Gig and it’s sold out.

White Lies open proceedings shortly after the doors open. We have been harsh in our opinions of the band in recent weeks, criticising their album for lacking any soul and and a recent live excursion as being “an exercise in one track darkness.” Tonight however White Lies tick nearly all the required boxes. Their heavy bass lines and brooding guitars are designed to fill a big space like this. They sound soaring and potently dramatic. Acknowledging that they feel honoured to be playing with The Cure they thump their chests in admiration, and win over large sections of the audience.

Crystal Castles come across as style over substance. Lead singer Alice is a skeletal shrieking doll who wrestles with a strobe light and bangs the microphone hard against her head before writhing around at the front of the stage in front of the press pit. Electro punks they may be but already their act is beginning to fall into the realms of a parody of itself. The actions of Alice are becoming predictable, less dangerous and anarchic than she probably thinks they are. And the music ? A bleeping mass of Casio / Atari rave which feels lost in such a cavernous space.

Main support act Franz Ferdinand deliver exactly what you would expect. Keeping chat to the minimum the band race through a set of hits such as Matinee, Ulysses and Take Me Out interspersed with songs from their new album. It is a workmanlike performance with Alex Kapranos strutting the stage like a haughty hip schoolmaster. Their tight choppy indie guitar rhythms are zestful and reasonably crowd pleasing, even connecting with some of the die hard Cure fans dressed as Robert Smith down the front.

"We're going to play a few songs that we didn't play last year. Quite a few,” mumbles and stutters Smith, referencing their previous epic three and a half hour show in London, and so they do.

The Cure have always been a band that have set their own agenda and tonight for the most part that agenda does not mean pandering to a crowd. For those expecting a greatest hits show there may have been initial disappointment. There can be very few bands who can fill a 20,000 capacity arena and decide to not play so many singles such as Love Cats, Friday I’m In Love, Close To Me, Lullaby or Why Can’t I Be You. Instead The Cure prove that the title of Goth Like Genius may have made as much sense as the recently bestowed NME God Like Genius award as the band wade through a surging set of grand morbid heaviness including Shake Dog Shake, One Hundred Years and the deep despair of Disintegration. It is this refusal to compromise or do the expected that is one of the reasons The Cure still exist today. Only In Between Days and Just Like Heaven are tossed out as crowd pleasers, played one after the other mid set, and they feel almost throwaway.

Smith himself is still the bumbling, awkward slightly alienated boy with the unkempt spider web hair and whiney vocals coaxing sombre introspection from his guitar like an unloved teenager. It is this look and the gothic sadness of the music that has lead to the singular devotion of The Cure for so many. Robert Smith is the anti rock star who just happens to be playing arenas.

Finishing with It’s Over the band return for a five song encore that tosses away the morose and delivers punkish new wave bravado. Boys Don't Cry, Jumping Someone Else's Train, Grinding Halt, 10:15 Saturday Night and Killing An Arab, all songs from the bands earliest releases, are bashed out without any fine tuning. It’s just four men with guitars and drums, like a band in a garage; it feels utterly fresh even though these songs come from three decades ago.

The Cure demonstrate at the NME Big Gig that following your own muse can be as gratifying for an audience as a predictable greatest hits set. This set may not have been the most accessible for those who are new to their music, but for those prepared to accept the challenge The Cure bring bigger, darker rewards.

The Great E Mail Challenge (Part1) - Email #2

Of course we never expected our first email to be published. We would have been disappointed if it had; the first part of the challenge would have been over too quickly for the development of this series to run. So it was actually a feeling of relief last Wednesday when we opened the NME letters page to see that our first attempt at correspondence with the folks at IPC Productions had failed.

Without any further planning, our second email is flying across the interweb. More comments on the state of music from Breaking More Waves. We'll continue this for a few more yet, before changing strategy.

Dear NME

Oh the irony. In last weeks issue you jumped on the bandwagon and ran a two page article on Twitter, whilst on the back page your godlike genius Robert Smith of The Cure said that he felt sympathy for artists starting out now, knowing that everything they do is out there for everyone to look at. Personally I’m with Fat Bob on this one. With Myspace, Facebook, Bebo and now Twitter, bands have no mystique anymore. Everything is known and there is no room for mistakes. Acts are being dropped before their album is even released. It’s a harsh harsh world for bands, and the chances of any of the indie hopefuls of today being around as long as The Cure are as slim as Kate Moss’s pinkie.

Robin, Portsmouth

Now That's What I Call Music Selected Track #2 - The Cure - The Love Cats

The Cure are probably one of Breaking More Waves favourite all time bands. From the dark despair and decay of Pornography and the morbid grandeur of Disintegration to some of their perfectly twisted sugar coated pop songs such as Friday I’m In Love, In Between Days and Close To Me, The Cure’s back catalogue must be the envy of many other bands.

Often seen as gloomy outsiders, this has never stopped The Cure embracing the mainstream singles charts, and hence when the cartoon jazz of The Love Cats reached their highest chart position to that date in the UK at Number 7 it felt like the freaks and weirdo’s had been let in through the back door. Still played at indie clubs around the country, The Love Cats is a bona fide classic pop tune and is one of the highlights of the first Now That's What I Call Music Vol 1 album.