The Cure – 4.13 Dream (2008)

4:13 Dream is the 13th studio album by English rock band The Cure. It was released on 27 October 2008, through record labels Suretone and Geffen.

The thirteenth studio album by The Cure was originally intended to be a double album; however, frontman Robert Smith confirmed in interviews that this idea was scrapped, despite the fact that thirty-three songs had been recorded. Some songs featured on the album were recycled from earlier album sessions: an example is “Sleep When I’m Dead”, which was originally written for the band’s 1985 album The Head on the Door. Smith attested that the album would mostly comprise the upbeat songs the band recorded, while the darker songs may be released on another album.[citation needed] An official remix of “It’s Over” by Robert Smith appears on the 2018 release of Torn Down: It’s Over (Whisper Mix).

On 6 October 2007, The Cure played the first song from the upcoming album, “The Only One” (then titled “Please Project”) at the Download Festival in Mountain View, California as part of their 4Tour. Following this, the band slowly introduced other songs from the album.[citation needed] In order to finish recording 4:13 Dream by early 2008, they delayed their North American tour by eight months. Later in the tour, the band performed the songs “Underneath the Stars”, “The Perfect Boy”, “Sleep When I’m Dead”, “Freakshow” (then titled “Don’t Say Anything”), “The Only One” (then titled “Please Project”) and “It’s Over” (then titled “Baby Rag Dog Book”) at various shows. Although rumored to appear on the album from early reports,[citation needed] another song, “A Boy I Never Knew”, was omitted from the final track listing.

On 1 May 2008, The Cure posted a bulletin on their MySpace page in which they confirmed that the album would be released on 13 September.[citation needed] The bulletin also said that the thirteenth day of each month leading up to the release of the album (May, June, July and August) would see the release of a single, including B-sides that would not make the final cut.

The first single, “The Only One”, was released on 13 May, followed by “Freakshow” on 13 June, “Sleep When I’m Dead” on 13 July and “The Perfect Boy” on 13 August. On 16 July, Robert Smith announced that the album’s release date would be pushed back to 13 October, and in September’s place, an EP was released, entitled Hypnagogic States, containing remixes of the four singles from 4:13 Dream. On 21 August the title of the album was announced online as 4.13 Dream, corrected three days later to 4:13 Dream. The official track listing was first revealed on the band’s official website on 15 September. Smith also mentioned the “dark album” companion piece, and jokingly stated that he would like to have it released by his next birthday (21 April 2009). On 11 October, The Cure performed 4:13 Dream in its entirety at a free performance in the Piazza San Giovanni in Rome that was recorded for the MTV Live concert series. The album’s release date was delayed yet again, and was ultimately released on 27 October.

4.13 Dream a score of 69 out of 100 from Metacritic based on “generally favorable reviews”. While most critics have praised the album as a quintessential Cure record, others have criticised the album’s production and its overly comfortable and lightweight[ songwriting. (by wikipedia)

A hefty four years and several release date shuffles after the last album finally The Cure’s 4: 13 Dream arrives.

Despite a propensity for Smith looking like a slightly more portly cross-dressing Edward Scissorhands and sounding like he’s on the verge of tears while singing, it’s always been a mystery why The Cure ever got labelled as g*ths. In truth, their earliest work may have existed in the same grey navel-gazing post industrial space as say, Joy Division (cf: Seventeen Seconds), but since the mid 80s Smith has mostly been dealing in the kind of upbeat Cocteau Twins-meets-The 13 Floor Elevators material that was always more baroque and flowery than black and floury.

So it is with 4:13 dream. The album’s been preceded by a single released on the 13th of each month; beginning with The Only One in May. This is a feisty return to the place where Robert sounds like he’s about to burst from whatever it is that’s got him in its grip – in this case good old fashioned love. It’s a good antidote to the more monumental post rock of the opening Underneath The Stars.

Smith’s always worked best in small numbers and the return of Porl Thompson on guitar after 14 years seems to have reinvigorated Smith no end. If there’s a period of the Cure that this album most closely resembles it’s Wish – their most commercial effort.

In fact most of the album is upbeat – clebrating mental health and bounding with energy. This renewed joi de vivre is expressed best on Sleep When I’m Dead, a song that dates back to the Head On The Door period. Smith claims that he’s deliberately edited out the dourer numbers slimming down what was originally pencilled in as a double album, and you can’t help feeling that he did the right thing. Freakshow may have a coruscating wah wah solo at its heart – but you could also see Girls Aloud doing a version. Really.

It’s not all joyous love songs and latino rave-ups though. The Scream builds from an electro flamenco nightmare to a wailing crescendo, while Switch resurrects those old rock miserablist stand-bys, isolation and paranoia, as its subject. ”I’m tired of being alone with myself” yelps Bob.

Release delays may often signal dissatisfaction, but judging by reports of a wealth (33 songs) of material it seems to indicate that it was just a crisis of self editing that held up procedings. Luckily it was worth the wait. This is classic Cure, weird, wired and wiggy when it needs to be, but never overly glum, harrowing or serious. Time to get the lipstick out again. (Chris Jones)

Personnel:
Jason Cooper (drums, percussion, loops)
Simon Gallup (bass)
Robert Smith (vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards)
Pearl Thompson (guitar)
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Catsfield Sub Rhythm Trio (handclaps)
Smud (percussion)

Tracklist:
01. Underneath The Stars 6.18
02. The Only One 3.57
03. The Reasons Why 4.36
04. Freakshow 2.30
05. Sirensong 2.23
06. The Real Snow White 4.43
07. The Hungry Ghost 4.30
08. Switch 3.45
09. The Perfect Boy 3.22
10. This. Here And Now. With You 4.07
11. Sleep When I’m Dead 3.52
12. The Scream 4.37
13. It’s Over 4.17

All songs written by:
Jason Cooper Simon Gallup – Robert Smith – Pearl Thompson

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The Cure – Wish (1992)

Wish is the ninth studio album by British alternative rock band The Cure, released on 21 April 1992, through Fiction Records in the UK and Elektra Records in the US. The record is the final studio album featuring Boris Williams and the first featuring Perry Bamonte, as well as being the last album featuring Porl Thompson for sixteen years. Whilst retaining the sound and mood of Disintegration (1989) on some tracks, Wish often found the band moving into more of a pop direction, and received positive reviews upon release, including a four star review in Rolling Stone that stated: “For its cult of millions, the Cure offers the only kind of optimism that makes sense.” Wish was also the band’s overall highest charting album, and most commercially successful in the band’s career, given its debut at number one in the UK and number two in the United States, where it sold more than 1.2 million copies. Wish was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 1993.

The album’s first single was “High”, released on 16 March 1992. The single peaked at number eight in the UK Singles Chart, forty-two in the US Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks. The album’s second single, “Friday I’m in Love”, released on 11 May 1992, became one of the band’s most popular songs – reaching number six in the UK Singles Chart and number eighteen in the Billboard Hot 100, and number one in the Modern Rock Tracks. The final single was for “A Letter to Elise”, going at number twenty-eight in the UK and 2 in the Modern Rock Tracks. On 16 November 1993, a limited EP called Lost Wishes was released on cassette with four new tracks on it.

In 1995, Q included Wish in its publication “In Our Lifetime: Q’s 100 Best Albums 1986–94”, a list compiled to celebrate its 100th issue.

The Cure, 1992

Near the middle of the Cure’s new album, Wish, Robert Smith, the band’s singer, songwriter and guitarist, encounters a girl who says, “It looks like you could do with a friend.” This is funny, and not just because the tune (“Wendy Time”) breaks out into the sort of screwball beat that the Cure revved up so well for “Why Can’t I Be You?” “You look like you could do with a pal/Someone to make you smile,” she continues, and no wonder: Five songs into Wish, Smith has already howled long and hard about the hells of intoxication, the shifting sands of time and, of course, the travails of love.

Smith is the top howler in pop music now. Bravely, mastering his own literate notions of how bands might do more with postpunk “gloom rock” than just bellyache, he has fiddled around with and fine-tuned the Cure for fifteen years. Since The Head on the Door (1985), when he discovered the joys of groove, acoustic jangle and any instrumentation that could further heighten the increasing emotionality of his songs, Smith’s work with the Cure has never been less than original, often inspired. Wish lacks the dynamic grab of Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (1987) and the awesome brooding rush of Disintegration (1989). Yet this outstanding album, like all the Cure’s best music, runs on its own brash logic, making a virtue of its emotional polarities.

Smith has reason to be so confident; by several years, the Cure anticipated the loud, often abrasive, well-crafted Nineties rock of British “shoe gazers” like My Bloody Valentine and rhythm-mad Mancunians like Primal Scream. Moreover, Smith’s demonstration that carefully recorded distortion and freed emotions — no matter how personal — can reach millions foreshadowed the international success of Nirvana. But unlike, say, U2, the Cure doesn’t conceive of itself as a Great Band, damn well seeing to it that the world listens. Smith has always demanded, R.E.M.-style, that multiplatinum audiences come to him and his various collaborators: All he wants is for you to hear how he feels.

Revisiting the intensity of Disintegration, Wish leads with “Open,” a portrayal of one man’s reflexive drinking done with a steady sway of drumming, interlocking guitars and Smith’s all-out singing, which grows wilder and “sicker” as he “clutches another glass.” The chord changes in the chorus accentuate the state of mind of the protagonist, who keeps “pouring it down.” Other songs in this style include the psychedelic ravings of “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea” — about a troubled couple who debate loyalty and betrayal as the man observes that the woman’s head seems “on fire” — and the slower “Apart,” one of the best songs on Wish. The song’s Middle Eastern elegance builds as Smith keeps wondering, “How did we get so far apart?” Smith uses his voice almost like another raging guitar on “Cut,” and ever the antistar, he instructs, “Please stop loving me/I am none of these things,” on “End,” the album’s noisy conclusion.

Other songs inhabit grander, sweeter, more nostalgic or more rueful worlds. The cinematic “Trust,” with larger-than-life synth lines, is a plea for stability, tinged with hope; in a setting like this, with Smith pledging his love forever, that girl probably won’t catch the next train out. “Friday I’m in Love,” a Cure tune for fans of snappy Sixties pop, comes with zinging harmonies and acoustic-guitar melodies that skitter against Smith’s carefree celebration of the freedom weekends present. Both “A Letter to Elise” and “To Wish Impossible Things” look back in midtempo and analyze failed love in personal and philosophical terms.

But as “High,” the album’s first single, and “Doing the Unstuck” insist, Wish seeks to offset the Cure’s famous mopeyness with some joy. Happiness — that’s always been somewhere in the Cure’s dire music, in the band’s long-standing commitment to exploration and play. Wish clarifies this further. “It’s never too late to get up and GO!” Smith sings on “Doing the Unstruck,” sounding like no other booster on earth. For its cult of millions, the Cure offers the only kind of optimism that makes sense. (by James Hunter, Rolling Stone,  April 21, 1992)

Personnel:
Perry Bamonte (guitar, keyboards, bass, piano)
Simon Gallup (bass, keyboards)
Robert Smith (vocals, guitar, keyboards, bass)
Porl Thompson (guitar)
Boris Williams (drums, percussion)
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Kate Wilkinson (viola)

Tracklist:
01. Open 6.51
02. High 3.37
03. Apart 6.40
04. From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea 7.44
05. Wendy Time 5.13
06. Doing The Unstuck 4.24
07. Friday I’m In Love 3.39
08. Trust 5.33
09. A Letter To Elise 5.14
10. Cut 5.55
11. To Wish Impossible Things 4.43
12. End 6.46

All songs composed by Perry Bamonte, Simon Gallup, Robert Smith, Porl Thompson, Boris Williams

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