The Cure For The Nostalgia

The Cure keeps the eighties aesthetic on its new album Wild Mood Swings

Robert Smith gravitates in the vacuum of the eighties, that insists on not finishing, and in the decade of ninety that can't impose its mark. He can be deliring on ecstasy, intoxicated of Lacrima Christi, wearing a classic adidas, dressing one psychedelic tshirt, surfing on the internet... The time seems not to have changed for The Cure.
You can accuse The Cures of longing for having maintained its aesthetic model. But what to say when this is the aesthetics of Pulp, 1979 (Smashing Pumpkins), Frank Miller, Kathrin Bigelow, Oasis, X File. The novelty of the pop world is very close to the longing in 1996.
Wild Mood Swings catches the machine of the time and gives turns in the same place, the Mr. Smith's fantasies world . Together with him, there are times, strange Simon Gallup, staring at the ground for pure shyness, clothes of doubtful character, and the bass seized as if it was bazooca full of musical notes. Mr. Smith also has squires beginners: the sweet and equally shy guitarrist Perry Bamonte, the reasonable drummer Jason Cooper and the talkative keyboarder Roger O'Donnell, one more Ayrton Senna planetary fan. Wild Mood Swings is the new Cure album, released this week all over the world.
The new The Cure's line-up doesn't maintain the sound density that characterized many faces of the group, and verged the insanity limits (hear Pornography and understand better). The Cure `96 crop doesn't release, but leaves in second plan this concept, to invest in a more light sonority. The option gives more space for the melodies, and made Wild Mood Swings pop. A refined and pleasant pop.
The trips, that were already dives on acids, are now small walks for psychedelic parks - "Strange Attraction" - or astral orbits - "Jupiter Crash". The melancholy that the arrangements keep and Smith's dying voice are served in small doses. Enough to maintain the essence and to move away the revival possibility.
The homogeneity and pop orientation on Wild Mood Swings hinder prominences choice among the tracks. "Club America" varies for the differentiated intonation in a sarcastic Smith voice. With inclination for symphony, "This Is A Lie" is one of the best, "The 13th", that Cure presented in January in a special audition for the brazilian press with the title "The Two Chord Cool" and without final mixs, it become better. A hybrid rock mariachi that honour Tito Puente is interesting, with prominence for the use of the trumpets.
The album's portion 'sun also exists in England' can be noticed in "Mint Car" and "Return". Cheerful and too easy they don't convince. But the ballad "Jupiter Crash", that was presented in Hollywood Rock puts back the group on its good moments. Cure for discotheques scale the hips in "Round & Round & Round", Cure of heavy guitars show the claws in "Trap", Cure jazzy serves its white wine in "Gone!", Cure capable to stick neurons among four walls injects its lethal dose in "Numb"., of sublime oriental harmonies.
Cure of Wild Wood Swings is not a clone of himself as it was noticed in the São Paulo gig during the Hollywood Rock. It doesn't present its best line-up, but maintains the dignity, being capable to do beautiful records. Bob Smith and his friends don't sound unupdated in the nineties. Perhaps the nineties are unupdated.
(Marcelo Ferla - May/96)