![]() ![]() The Cure is an act whose songs have been defined by a desire for everything all at the same time, an irredeemable existential conflict that never seems totally happy with what it’s got. ‘Homesick’ still cries out for attention, but seems to recognise in moments the benignity of the universe, as if to accept it. Tracks like ‘Lovesong’ and ‘Disintegration’ carry a sense of innocence over from ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ that reappears later in ‘Friday I’m in Love’.īut then we get ‘Fascination Street’, ‘Prayers for Rain’, tracks that latch on to a moody post-punk tone, but deliver a more refined, adult meaning. “Better hang on!”Īnd so it’s no surprise that the mood of the album has a certain self-importance about it ‘Plainsong’ is incomparably epic in its intro with a sort-of oblivious sex appeal, a cool that wouldn’t work had Smith been a few years older. Disintegration has a sense of self-awareness. Smith himself was nearing thirty, the band approaching fifteen. The album seems to reflect that conscious decision to grow up a bit. It strikes at just the right moment between twenty and thirty, managing to glimpse into youth itself before turning away in horror: a snapshot into that feeling between naïvety and starting to get the hang of it.īear in mind that Disintegration c ame out towards the end of the prime years, sandwiched between Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (1987) and Wish (1992). In all likelihood, The Cure couldn’t replicate the success of their album. It’s unlikely, but possible, that any will survive the next thirty years, transcending culture and resonating with something more profoundly ‘human’. ![]() Rather than bolting itself on to a single shared experience, Disintegration forms an attachment with a generation, a dynamic generation – young people.Īs I write this on a Friday, ten more albums will be released by twenty-somethings living in their past, allowing their minds to wander back to adolescence, back when there was time to feel around being sad, lost, happy, confused. The album goes beyond the feeling of its time I don’t need to have lived through 1989 to ‘get’ it. I was born half a decade after the release of Disintegration and still find myself personally attached to it. Life is full of these moments.īut legacy is something else. CCR or the Stones come on and everybody listening is transported back fifty years. Vietnam secured the award for best soundtrack early on and never looked back. Aligning yourself with a moment in time is one thing, finding a connection to some passing sentimentality, a summer or a movement. ![]()
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