Not so wild after all (Wild Mood Swings - The Cure)

Member Name: Ariel_uk

Product:	Wild Mood Swings - The Cure
Date:	25/10/01 (62 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's the Cure, More of their regular magic

Disadvantages: But without the magic ...., Cure by numbers

I can't in all honesty say I don't like this album - it's everything you've come to expect from Mr Smith and Co - *that* guitar sounds, layers of synths and violins, sweeping instrumental sections, impassioned choruses, and a delirious wave of wordplay conjuring up fantastic visuals. On the other hand this is *exactly* what you have come to expect, and therefor disappoints. It's essentially Cure by Numbers, and I, for one, expect better from these gentlemen.

It doesn't help that this is essentially a 'woe is me, I'm famous' album, which is a genre I am none too fond of - how else do you explain the emotional non-resonance of Strange Attraction? The central subject matter of Cure songs has always been relationships and feeling, yet this tale of anti-worship touches no heart strings, in fact, leaves me cold. Even for those who do worship, who do wish they were the girl in the song, I can't imagine this would be a favourite track, it's so *not* real - the supper-lite music behind the narrative lyrics doesn't help.

Some of these tracks are pretty good - Mint Car's hyperbole, and the fantastic opening lines of Club America are classic 'pure pop' Cure - silly, bouncy, maniacally happy, with that darker undercurrent twisted in there for balance. The slower, simpler Treasure and Bare, for example, reminds me of their Disintegration / Wish period - Robert Smiths almost whispered, intimate vocals, pictures of the realisation of the end of a relationship, striped down guitar and string melodies, slow bass rhythms. Even the literary references Treasure 'it's better to forget than to remember me and cry' linking back to Christina Rossetti's poem 'Remember' with it's closing lines 'Better by far that you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad'

But at the end of the day, any of the better tracks could have come from an earlier al
bum, and there are more merely ok tracks that I would expect. The root of my disappointment is really that the Cure are known for having a very distinctive sound, and constantly moving it forward with each album - and this is repetition, almost stagnation. It's not even special as an object - standard jewel case, lurid ellow cover art - I know it's only packagin, but I'm gready, and want some pretty to go with my shiny, or at the least a dose of interesting-to-look-at.

Not one of their best pieces of work, unfortunately. I'll recomend it, but only for those who are already fans. It's still better than a lot of pop, just not as good as it ought to have been.

Wild Mood Swings - Fiction records - 1996

1: Want
2: Club America
3: This is a Lie
4: The 13th
5: Strange Attraction
6: Mint Car
7: Jupiter Crash
8: Round & Round & Round
9: Gone!
10: Numb
11: Return
12: Trap
13: Treasure
14: Bare

www.the-cure.com

NB - ratings below - for Producer read 'Band' Still can't figure out what they're really asking!

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