Review Summary: A masterpiece of heartbreak
The Cure are undisputedly an institution of British guitar music, and boast a varied and multi-faceted back catalogue that is the legacy of a career spanning 4 decades. In the eyes of many however they are characterised by Disintegration, an album that cements their image as Gothic godfathers, despite however many attempts they may have taken to produce upbeat content.
A mood of fear and foreboding pervades the whole of Disintegration, best exemplified by 'Lullaby', with its tales of night terrors and sweat-soaked nightmares. The monster of the tale, the 'Spiderman' that moves 'softer than shadow and quicker than flies', is a dark force so omnipotent that the narrator can do nothing to prevent becoming its metaphysical dinner.
There is a wide range of worries, anxieties and fears that the Spiderman can symbolise, but throughout the album the fear touched upon most by Smith's lyrics is losing a close love. Whether it be in the epic, swirling guitars of 'Pictures of You' or the sparse desolation of 'The Same Deep Water As You', Smith sounds a man who has just witnessed his love clambering aboard the next train at the platform, leaving for shores as far away as possible and chucking all their letters and memories into the nearest gutter. 'If only I'd thought of the right words, I wouldn't be breaking apart, all my pictures of you' could be the simply expressed epitaph of countless broken hearts.
Even Smith's attempts at a sincere lovesong on this album, aptly titled 'Lovesong', seems drenched in dark irony. The words, read without music or Smith's vocals, seem at face level like a naive poem composed by a pure hearted teenager. 'However far away, I will always love you/ However long I stay, I will always love you' read like a cheesy cliche that is chipped away by the realities of life quicker than it took to conjure those words. However accompanied by that pensive, moody synth intro, the frail guitar riff, and Smith's resigned and dejected vocals, the song comes alive into a haunting beauty that seems to symbolise the precociousness and loneliness of loving someone more than what is sensible.
All the negativity of the album is unleashed in the title track, an eight minute long howl of desperation. The lyrics run together like a ranting monologue that lacks any syntax, an expression of deep anguish. The resignation creeps in towards the end of the song, as the refrain 'how the end always is' is the end product of the previous lines upon lines of bitterness and hurt. This mood of resignation is picked up by the last two songs of the album, 'Homesick' and 'Untitled'. The simplicity of the titles reflect aptly the sense of fatigue these songs convey, as the narrator first pleads to his lost love for 'just one more', before echoing the earlier 'Pictures of You' in the latter with the line 'never quite said what I wanted to say to you.' Except now it all sounds more weak and futile. The narrator and the listener both know the love affair and the emotions that has predominated the album has flown and we have nothing more left than to look back in anger one last time, and pack all the tenderness of the heart away until the next rollercoaster.
