The Cure's WISH Is Their Greatest Album
With lyrics like "When I See You Kitten As A Cat, Yeah As Smitten As That, I Can't Get That Small" you know it's true
Okay, those of you about to throw DISINTEGRATION into the mix, I see you. I even sorta kinda agree. I don’t review music for a living. I’m a movie guy. So what the hell do I know, right?
A little explanation is in order. I’m not sure I process music like the rest of you. In fact, I’m certain I don’t. I have what I would call a cinematically narrative ear. I’ll explain - to me, songs are stories. Even the instrumentals. They have arcs, they have builds, climaxes, denouements, they have characters and situations that I respond to as if I’m being told a story. Now, of course, not all songs are like that, but the ones I respond to the most are. Some songs even have cinematography. Some are black and white in 1.33 to 1 ratio, and some are full on Technicolor 2.39 to 1 widescreen. I know, it’s weird.
A friend of mine gets irritated about how I listen to new music. Sometimes, a song gets its hooks in me, I hit repeat, and I’ll listen to it many times before even going to the next track. He wants me to appreciate the overarching theme of the album, and I will, but this is just the way I process it. Some songs have melodies that I become obsessed over, and I play them over and over until my brain has sucked every last drop of dopamine out of every hook and every rhythm. Then I’ll go to the next track. It probably makes for some frustrating moments if you’re in the car with me.
I’m also not the kind of person that goes out of their way to listen to new music. I tend to stay with the songs that bring me joy, or put me in an emotional place that I want to be in that moment. Now that I’m in my fifties, I find it difficult to relate to most music - they don’t make songs about the things I relate to the most. And, again, I approach music not as music, but as cinema. If you didn’t know already, that’s how I process most things. If it’s a problem, you’re likely not going to get very far with me; fortunately my friends know this and seem okay with it (or at least they don’t tell me about it). The same friend that gets irritated by the way I listen to music has told me that everything I love comes from a Cameron Crowe kind of sensibility, which is fair. Everything is narrative, including the soundtrack of my life.
So where does The Cure fit in? I’m not terribly knowledgeable about the band - other than Robert Smith, I probably wouldn’t recognize any of the band members if I saw them on the street. (R.E.M. is really the only band that I would do the whole Beatles-chasing-them-down-the-street thing for, but that’s another story.) But I get into these modes where I just obsess over a band and won’t listen to anything else for weeks straight. I did that with The Cure in 2020, for certain. I went through their entire catalog, especially on the long drives between work and home.
Here’s the thing about The Cure - they only really work in headphones. There are a few bands like that - unless you’re completely sonically surrounded by the music, they just don’t have the same impact. Nine Inch Nails is another - you have to immerse yourself into the music for it to be effective, at least at it’s highest potential. I’m not saying The Cure’s songs are bad, it’s that they’re delicate, complicated. It’s a house of cards. They stack melody on top of melody, even sometimes clashing with each other, but the rhythm and bass brings them all together. The best of their songs have what I would call a melodic dialogue, where some melodies complement others, even when they seem at cross purposes. Again, narrative ear.
I could go nostalgic for WISH - it’s the first of their albums I embraced, mostly because in 1992 I was living alone in a powerless apartment, devouring all kinds of alternative music. I was big into Nirvana, R.E.M., many of the Seattle bands, but I was also branching out. It’s probably the time of my life I was the most adventurous, musically. The same year The Cure’s WISH came out, I bought My Bloody Valentine’s LOVELESS. Talk about an album that you can’t listen to unless it’s turned all the way up. Those melodies only reveal themselves through walls of noise and feedback - they’re there, but you have to pay attention. No distractions. WISH is like that. In fact, I don’t think about WISH without thinking about LOVELESS. They play ear to ear with me.
WISH was the album that saved me. Yes, I’m getting all cliché. I suffer from depression. It’s not nearly as bad as it was 30 years ago, but trust me, it was bad. I’m not someone who cheers themselves out of it, either - for me, the only way out is through. I’d go dark. But I would also scramble to hold on to any liferope that I could use to climb out of it. For me, when it comes to music, that’s through hooks and melodies. And WISH has some of the greatest melodies The Cure has ever created. Intricate rock symphonies that I could lose myself within, I’d float on Smith’s guitar, Simon Gallup’s penetrating bass rhythms, and Boris Williams’ elegant percussion.
Every song on WISH has to be turned up all the way. That’s the only way you can catch what Smith and company are doing. There are tiny strands of melody that live within the main hooks, and every song feels like it’s taking you on a journey. None of them feel aimless. You may not be able to see where you’re going, but there is definitely a destination in mind, and The Cure know how to get you where you need to go.
There’s conflict in WISH - the album goes from deep soulgazing darkness to frothy pop, sometimes in the space between songs, but even the seemingly happy tunes hint that the happiness won’t last, that the darkness is coming, and that your memories of the good times will see you through the darkness. Even a bouncy song like “Friday I’m In Love” hides a melancholy - the happy day will eventually give way to the sadness, and it’s only a matter of time, so enjoy the light while it still shines. “Doing The Unstuck” is a knock-down-the-door jam that tells us to fight the darkness, everything else be damned - “Kick out the gloom, kick out the blues, tear out the pages with all the bad news” but it also assures us that it’s all coming to an end, and to fight back as hard as you can.
The centerpiece of WISH, to me, is “From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea,” an epic song of heartbreak and loss that earns every last one of its seven minutes. Every time I hear it I am transported. Again, narrative ear - this feels the most like a story to me, and the way the guitar and the melody sweeps me away is cathartic, every time. It feels like drowning.
Last week, The Cure re-released WISH for its 30th anniversary, including some instrumentals, B-sides, new mixes, and the “Lost Wishes” EP. I especially love the “High (Higher Mix)” - that song was always another one of my favorites, but this new (to me) mix feels like I’m Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. It feels like I’m walking through Dorothy’s house right into Munchkinland. The cascading guitars and bass brings me home.
Again, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. Music is weird to me. I know what I love and why I love it. This is me trying to articulate why. And yeah, Joe, I’m listening to “From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea” on repeat, because it’s a journey I want to take, again and again and again. WISH is available now on iTunes, vinyl, and CD.