The Cure

Robert Smith (born in England in 1959) is the existential poet behind the saga of The Cure, a group born in the era of punk rock and hailed among the pioneers of dark-punk, but in reality alien to both movements.

The Cure burst in 1978 into the existential catacombs of dark punk with a bleak and anguished music, marked by depressed and introverted lyrics. The manifesto of their Camus-like alienation was Killing An Arab (Small Wonder), a melody with exotic and transcendent hues, immersed in a sinister film-noir atmosphere.

The album Three Imaginary Boys (Fiction, 1979) highlighted Smith�s singular talent for crafting conventionally structured songs that evoke the desolate languor and anguished spleen of decadent dandies. The breviary of his nervous depression distills suspended, almost hypnotic atmospheres (the hammering rarefaction of 10:15 Saturday Night), a sarcasm filled with hatred of the crowd (Jumping On Someone Else�s Train, their second hit, rich in rhythmic effects), apocalyptic visions (the funereal, martial World War) and horrific nightmares (the swinging, spectral Subway Song), before sinking into the delicate ballad Three Imaginary Boys, a poem of fear and neurosis.
These are affable refrains, which the formation (a classic power trio capable of Object and Grinding Halt) dresses with sparse, essential arrangements, oscillating between hyper-realist impressionism and expressionist outcry, conducted like a calm dissertation but then marked�and often devastated�by a change in rhythm, a vehement solo, an electronic trick. What makes them lyrical and heart-wrenching relics are Smith�s suffering, fatalistic singing and the counterpoint of his melodic, crystalline guitar playing.
The anthems Fire In Cairo, with its hallucinatory eroticism, and Boys Don't Cry, tinged with tender romanticism, enhance the emphasis through cadence and catchiness. The maniacal impetus of hardcore, the satanic atmospheres of dark punk, the movement�s exhausting race toward self-destruction�all are transfigured by The Cure into a more human, and above all universal, nihilism.

The following year, with Seventeen Seconds (Fiction, 1980 � Rhino, 2005) and a largely reshuffled lineup (most importantly the addition of bassist Simon Gallup), Smith plunged decisively into more morbid and resigned paranoia. His bleak visions rise prophetically over the vigorous gallop of Play For Today, the delicate music-box of In Your House, the funereal finale of Seventeen Seconds. The album�s hit, A Forest, does not abandon its desperate tone, but manages to set in motion a hypnotic vortex of guitar and bass, while gloomy keyboard phrases swirl in the background. The instrumental interludes A Reflection, Three are crafted to maximize effect, with rationed chords and hallucinated cadences. His perpetually anguished register is flat and monotone, but it hardly matters. That too becomes part of the persona.

Faith (Fiction, 1981 � Rhino, 2005), recorded by the trio of Smith, Gallup and the (awful) drummer Lawrence �Lol� Tolhurst, is the darkest and least musical album of Smith�s career (by now firmly in control of the music after the group had shrunk to a trio). The moribund chants of Holy Hour, All Cats Are Grey and Faith sound tired and repetitive, making the vibrant Doubt and especially the relentless Primary seem brilliant simply because they are the opposite. The quasi-symphonic arrangement of Funeral Party and the electronic effects of Drowning Man, the album�s two manifesto pieces�or at least its most atmospheric�prove that Smith had grasped this limitation in his style.

The 2005 reissue of Faith includes the 27-minute instrumental soundtrack to a film, Carnage Visors, one of Smith�s most depressed pieces of music.

It is therefore no surprise that the single Charlotte Sometimes is danceable, melodic, schizoid, dreamlike. The truth is that up to this point The Cure have written very few songs worth hearing for their artistic value. This is a typical cult phenomenon that transcends artistic merit.

Smith�s Calvary culminates in the epic, acute suicidal crises of Pornography (Fiction, 1982 � Rhino, 2005), the album that marks the turn from the early dark-punk to the bleak existentialism (only loosely related to gothic rock) of his maturity. Musically, only the ambitions have changed: whereas the early tracks were concise and abrupt to stay fashionable with punk rock, the new ones tend to stretch out more complexly, in keeping with the post-punk era. But in reality the refrains are similar (i.e., weak) and the accompaniment is merely less abrasive.
The tormented solipsism of this fragile, romantic alter-ego of Ian Curtis (Joy Division) reaches the peak of its negative lyricism here. The songs become tonal poems, long, intense, and complex. The harmonies, already exceedingly tormented, grow even more convulsive, darker, more tribal, more dissonant�worthy soundtracks for the leader�s existential tragedy.
Agitated as never before, immersed in glacial vortices of electronics and distortions (One Hundred Years) and in geometric, tribal cadences (The Hanging Garden), The Cure�s sound reeks of psychological collapse, with the leader�s bark-like singing now approaching Brechtian declamation, with peaks of absolute delirium (Figurehead).
Towering above all are the hypnotic existential melancholy of Cold, worthy of some of the maddeningly desperate maelstroms of Tim Buckley, and the title-track, which fuses� with Wagnerian thrust and in a devastating coda� all the experiments in tribal rhythm, psychedelic distortions, martial recitatives and electronic dissonances. The work culminates, and finds repose, in Siamese Twins, a dreamlike, metaphysical danse macabre. Verbose and magniloquent, The Cure�s rock poem is the amateurish version of the rock-form kammerspiel by Public Image.

At this point, with Smith only half available due to his commitments with Siouxsie and the lineup in constant turmoil, the Cure name was used to experiment with chart-friendly synthpop and lounge jazz. Thus were born singles such as Let's Go To Bed (1982), Like An Animal (1983, under the name Glove), Walk (1983), Lovecats (1983), the brassy vaudeville piece that represents the baroque apex of this �humorous� phase, Caterpillar (1984), a frenzied flamenco and existential metaphor for Smith, In Between Days (1985), melodic disco music in the manner of New Order, and finally the Caribbean fanfare Close To Me (1985)�tracks that rely on far more polished psychedelic and danceable arrangements and on simple, optimistic lyrics, with an overtly commercial intent.

The album The Top (Fiction, 1984) injects massive doses of hard rock (Shake Dog Shake), raga-rock (Bird Mad Girl), psychedelia (Top), exoticism (Piggy In The Mirror) and folk (Empty World) into Smith�s skeletal scores, with the result of irreparably devastating them. Thanks to his dreamy, poetic lyrics and his hypnotic chants, Smith nonetheless earned the title of �pin-up� for intellectual adolescent girls�the male counterpart of Kate Bush�and became (despite his misanthropic beginnings) a semi-national star.

For The Head On The Door (Elektra, 1985) Smith employed a quintet rich in guitars and keyboards, evidently in search of an increasingly pleasant sound. The entire sonic iconography of the Cure brand seems camouflaged within the folds of the arrangements. The anguished scream is submerged by the thunderous disco music of In Between Days and Baby Screams; the existential crisis is diluted in the oriental ballet of Kyoto Song and the evanescent flamenco of Blood. The band�s skill in building the soundscapes of Close To Me (a sly soul number � la Prince) and Sinking (a sort of symphonic prelude), however, results in a substantial loss of identity.

The commercial phase culminated in the double album Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (Elektra, 1987), a monumental work that summarizes a decade of inner demons, psychic tensions, and paranoid visions, but also sets them in a warmer, more sensual atmosphere. The barbaric neurosis of the early records now rises into the romantic refrain of Just Like Heaven; the spasmodic tension of Killing An Arab is released in the bouncy soul of Why Can�t I Be You; the moribund litanies of Pornography are transformed into new-age tenderness such as One More Time.
Commercial touches abound: danceable trivialities like Hot Hot Hot, exotic vignettes such as Like Cockatoos, and relaxed ballads such as Catch; yet all are haunted by sinister premonitions, which sometimes take over and give rise to nightmares of dissonance and tribalism, as in the tense and convulsive delirium of The Kiss, the chaotic carnival of Icing Sugar and the tempestuous sabbath of Shiver And Shake.
The album�s climaxes are in fact its two most experimental tracks, each a concentrate of transcendent and psychedelic vibrations: If Only Tonight We Could Sleep and even more so Snakepit. The unusual care devoted to the arrangements results in an epigrammatic mannerism, a suggestive form that marries the excess of effects in the music with the austere philosophy of the lyrics. For the first time, Smith truly behaves like a musician (perhaps also thanks to his now mature ensemble).
Despite the multitude of expressive forms and the extreme formal care, Smith�s negative and pessimistic message is unmistakable: it is merely another way of reciting the rosary of the end.

The decade ended with the album Disintegration (Fiction, 1989). His traditional mood catalepsy is simply updated to �symphonic� productions; his languid, anemic melodies are reinforced with metronomic beats and heavy arrangements; his slow, psalm-like chants are accompanied by careful instrumental ouvertures that repeat the theme emphatically (not too differently from what the Moody Blues once did). The cold solipsism of the early days thus degenerates into apocalyptic, pretentious, and deafening atmospheres (the almost new-age palette of orchestral phrases that accompanies Plainsong, the vortex of whistles, dissonances, and melodic progressions that opens Fascination Street) which culminate in the oppressive danse macabre of Prayers For Rain.
A Nick Drake steeped in existentialist zeitgeist, Smith loses much of his charm as a suburban bistro poet when he declaims in the opera house (the tender ballad of Pictures Of You) or entertains on the dance floor (the catchy synthpop of Love Song) or intones the sensual synth-pop of Lullaby. A monumental thesis-driven work, the songbook of Disintegration magnifies both the strengths and weaknesses of Smith�s art: the nine minutes of The Same Deep Water As You, filled with tragic pathos and solemn ritualism, are not far from the baroque and romantic pieces of early Genesis; the seven minutes of Homesick, in twisted and unbroken swoon, are not far from Peter Hammill�s maniacal psychodramas; and the eight minutes of the title track, overflowing with sound effects and folk quotations, are not far from Peter Gabriel�s techno-funk. The salient fact remains that this is music which, unlike most of rock, continuously implodes on itself, trapped in a never-ending nightmare.

The single Never Enough (1990), one of the most rock-oriented of his career, anticipates the album Wish (Fiction, 1992), which, as often happens in Smith�s work, instead represents a relatively �light� parenthesis and perhaps his most romantic chapter. The guitars carve out space within the thick layer of keyboards and bass that had darkened the sound of Disintegration, and the riffs (as well as the bass lines) are layered, melody against melody, free to float, to drift, to remain submerged in the �mix� or to emerge forcefully, while the voice sails on their swells, carried along solely by its own inspiration.
Having taken care of his commercial obligation with the insipid High and the catchy but no less cloying Friday I'm In Love, Smith performs an act of rebalancing: the inertia/indolence weighing on Apart, a slow, delicate, atmospheric ballad, on the enchanted piano sonata of Trust, on the whispered raga of To Wish Impossible Things, and on the melancholy serenade of the single A Letter To Elise, is at once the flip side and the antidote to the paranoia hanging over End, with its tangle of obsessively repeated riffs and tribal polyrhythms, Smith�s lines made to reverberate into the ether, and to the overwhelming anxiety of From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea.

After four years away from the studio, Wild Mood Swings (Elektra, 1996) attempted to broaden the scope even further with the long, dreamlike instrumental opening of Want, which makes good use of electronics and shows that Enya did not pass in vain; with the psychedelic chaos of Club America; with the Renaissance cadence and violins of This Is A Life. Yet this is still, fundamentally, Robert Smith�an able crafter of claustrophobic atmospheres, but also a tedious and pedantic professor of dark-punk, always grandiose but, ultimately, vacuous. His singing has not improved; it has merely become more frantic. Even less has his guitar style adapted to the times. The lyrics are tired repetitions of his favorite stereotypes. Even when he tries the �light� approach�in the sumptuous pop of Mint Car, in the technological, polyrhythmic Peter Gabriel�style funk of Strange Attraction and Gone, in the visceral rhythm and blues of Return, and especially in the Caribbean fanfare of The 13th�Smith is too intellectual to be a true entertainer. And finally, there are too many ballads, as always, sung in his usual apocalyptic tone. In short, the same old limitations.

Standing On A Beach (1986) and Galore (Elektra, 1997) collect the singles. Unfortunately, the latter offers some terrible remixes instead of the originals.

Stylized to the point of being sterilized, the public celebration of his private obsessions on these later records ends up offering a caricature of himself: a cold, alienated, solitary philosopher-dandy.

Even when faced with the major albums, however, it is difficult not to feel irritation: too many monotonous passages, too much mediocrity in the singing, too many predictable melodies.

But by digging into the moral and sonic fabric of Joy Division, Smith�s self-indulgent romanticism has nonetheless arrived at a demanding form of tonal poem which, hand in hand with the stretching of dramatic time, allows Smith to hurl his lofty cry of pain against a landscape that is now nothing more than a shroud.

His greatest merit remains his ability to transform anguish and despair into mass spectacles, the dying rattle of his singing into a hedonistic anthem. But far too much of his music is merely a corollary to a theorem he has never managed to prove. Smith has done little that is truly important, and even less that is truly revolutionary.

Bloodflowers (Fiction, 2000) is the closing chapter of the existentialist trilogy that began with Pornography and Disintegration, arguably Smith's most important albums, and perhaps his most personal as well. The new song cycle is no less confessional and introverted, but it transpires a middle-age resignation and refrains from the morbid atmospheres of the past. Alienation still runs rampant, but paranoia prevails over self-flagellation. The lengthy tracks are often redundant and self-indulgent and sometimes plainly delirious (the 11-minute Watching Me Fall), but that's where his candor and amorality are more likely to win the listener's mind. The Last Day Of Summer, Out Of This World and Maybe Someday are sweet, melodic ballads that ideally sort of lull the Cure project into its final resting place.
Smith is still a mediocre musician (and a humorless one), but, if nothing else, his deeds are finally beginning to match his philosophical ambitions.

Greatest Hits (Elektra, 2001) offers a good overview of the commercial aspect of Cure's career.

Robert Smith was, in many ways (lyrically, musically, morally) born old. As he got old (for real), his music became more youthful. Aptly self-titled, The Cure (Geffen, 2004) bridges the old young Smith and the young old Smith, and balances out a life's worth of contradictions. He screams "I can't find myself" in Lost, an angry and almost beastly (for his standards) rant, but perhaps he has finally just done that: found himself. Not a pop star and not an alternative rocker, Smith is, quite simply, a moody amateur philosopher obsessed with existential themes, identity crises and sex/death iconography, who happened to become a musician because his entire generation did so. Alas, he is still not a real musician, and most songs on this album stand to prove it: they just don't sound like music. On the positive side, Smith does not whine and the band does not babble. At least, the Cure get to the point, something they had not done in many years.

4:13 Dream (2008) was as elegant (a` la Wish) as pointless, coming from an ageing philosopher who was too busy reminiscing his traumas to actually care for creating music in the era of digital, droning and free-form music, It sounded so blissfully old-fashioned.

Songs of a Lost World (2024) was Cure's first album in 16 years.