Very few bands evoke such instant admiration and respect as The Cure. Robert Smith and a revolving door of members have always merged post-punk era pop music with gothic landscapes and new wave sounds. Throughout its successful career the band has scored more than 30 singles with a knack for woe-is-me, distraught pop songs.
The Cure’s latest, 4:13 Dream, fails to capture the previous magic the band has been known to create. "Underneath The Stars" is a poor choice for the first track of the record, a gloomy, slow moving song that fails to pull in the listener.
The first-single, "The Only One" sounds like The Cure that scored huge hits in the 1980s with "Just Like Heaven" and "Friday I’m in Love." Forever unlucky in love frontman Robert Smith sings about the bliss of falling in and making love with the lyrics; "Oh I love, Oh I love / What you do to my lips / When you suck me inside and blow me a kiss."
"The Reason Why" was written from the perspective of a suicide note, trying to apologize to others for the selfish act. Smith’s lyrics come off as gothic poetry with lines like, "I won’t try to bring you down about my suicide / If you promise not to sing about the reasons why / And I’m falling through the stars."
Returning to the band’s Pornography-era, "The Perfect Boy" and "This. Here. And Now. With You" are nice reminders of The Cure’s past. The rest of 4:13 Dream falls flat as an album that could have benefited from a massive rewrite.
Perhaps it’s time for Smith and Company to dust the cobwebs off their diaries and concentrate on the make up of its songs, rather than makeup.
