Published on Feb 14, 2004
The Cure sings for itself, or so it seems, with Robert Smith’s
lonesome lovelorn lyrics – sad stories of his forsaken luck with
love, something that he cherishes as much as the sweet moments he
would have spent with his true love, if he were ever to find one.
“If you are heartbroken, don’t waste your tears pining for what you
have lost or couldn’t just find, but sing sad songs and share your
sorrow with millions of others like you and console yourself that
you are not the only one whose charm tripped over love and
fractured its heart.” This is Smith’s mantra, and it sure did a
hell of a lot to the band — its longevity proves so.
If there is a Cure album that is more loveless than anything
else they have created, it is
Disintegration.
Disintegration is the mother, father, granddaddy and
grand-nanny of albums whose feelings have lost their ways in search
for their heart’s ultimate desires. If art has to interpret a
heartsick condition,
Disintegration is it. If art has to provide comfort to a
broken heart, it is
Disintegration.
Disintegration is an album best enjoyed when one is in a
state of disrepair. An album that starts off with a song like
“Plainsong,” which kicks off the album more like it is ending it,
needs a lot of patience and heartache to go through the healing
journey of
Disintegration. Love may not, but the album rewards and
reciprocates, only if you empathize with its pain and yen.
This album is a long saga of Smith’s tales of love gone all
wrong. Somber and melancholic throughout,
Disintegration has not one moment of sunshine; it is
downcast all the way. It doesn’t cry aloud for sympathy. In all its
grandiose musical arrangements, it is passionate, but controlled.
Perhaps “Lullaby” and “Fascination Street” are the only two
anomalies, where the album deviates from what it starts off with
and ends with — moody ballads with a sense of utter
hopelessness.
Disintegration, probably Cure’s best, has the finest love
songs in rock: love seems even more special when it is burdened
with the pangs of longing and aching. It is only ironic that the
beauty of love lies not in the red roses, but in the wounds that
its thorns bleed.