Album Details

• Artist: The Cure
• Album: Wish
• Label: Elektra
• Year of Release: 1992
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: charlesmartel on 2011-09-12

This enabled the Cure, when it worked, to use the music to explore themes more deeply than they could do in shorter tracks. The band could texture the music more, changing tempo bringing in instruments and different musical themes as and when they felt the need. The length of many of the tracks gave the band the opportunity to explore music Alternatively, and there was always the danger of this, filling an album with longer tracks opened the door to long, boring quasi prog-rock tracks which didn't really suit the band and certainly did not appeal to me.

With the oft-lauded Disintegration they very much leant towards the latter effect, though I have come to appreciate it more in recent months. With Wish, they leant very much towards the former. However, the album does require some active listening. It is not something you can put on and allow the music to wash over you, delving into your consciousness and opening up to you. Part of the reason for this lies in the fact that it is a much more guitar oriented album than its immediate predecessors. Disintegration, in my opinion, seriously lacked some good songs which, with a few notable exceptions such as "Plainsong", did not involve exploring the misery of love, life, death and the weather, a deficit which the band tried to make up by layering the sound with waves of guitar noise. The Cure didn't do shoegaze well, and on Disintegration, it showed. That album is even harder to appreciate a single sitting than Wish.

Wish is lighter in mood and because of the cleaner guitar sound. As a result, it comes across as a more beautiful listening experience. It is framed with a great track in "Open" and concludes, appropriately enough, with "End": not the most original concept in musical history. In between are a mixture of songs and themes. Some of the tracks, such as "Trust" and "Apart", are quite mournful and depressing, like the Cure we have all come to know and love. "A Letter to Elise" has some superb lyrics while "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea" continues a welcome return to form from the band. Of course, a Cure album would not be complete without a disappointment and this one has two - the overly poppy "Doing the Unstuck" and the irritating "Wendy Time".

But don't let the disappointments put you off. Wish marked a welcome return to form for the Cure. Sadly, they did not sustain it. After this the Cure went off the rails and I went off the Cure.

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