Ah, The Cure! Have you broken into my house and taken a close look at my CD collection? You'll be starting with Depeche Mode next, even if you don't know it at the moment!
There are six good songs on Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. Torture (great song), Why Can't I Be You, All I Want, One More Time, Fight and, of couse, Just Like Heaven (which happens to be my favorite song of all time). It's acually the last Cure album I've gotten, and what surprized me is how poor it is lyrically. Apart from Just Like Heaven there aren't any really good lyrics (well, Fight's gets bonus points for the message, and the first verse is good). This perplexes me since I've always thought of Robert Smith as a really good lyricist. That's probably because my first two Cure albums were Disintegration (great lyrics upon great lyric, that one) and Wish (more simplistic lyrics for the most part, but still loads of great ones there and the concept lyrics works, unlike on Kiss Me...), so those are what shaped my view of his lyrical abilities. What have struck me after having heard their entire work is that this ability isn't something he always had, it's something he developed over the years. He showed promise on Faith but after that he fumbled for most of the 80's before blossoming on Disintegration.
Another thing that's struck me is that they were an entirely different band pre-Disintegration. Disintegration took them back to the vein of Faith (which, if you don't have it, should be your next stop, Faith is a great album, better than Pornography) with a sprawling and atmospheric sound, and since that's where I started I thought that had always been the Cure sound. But that's not quite true. In between Faith and Disintegration (which is a large chunk of their career) they had a more primitive, straight forward sound. Apart from Head on the Door this sound was quite dark more often than not, but it was always primitive with focus on multi-layered arrangements with plenty of melodies. For the most part it was clever, catchy pop that went from
cute to...
not so cute?. When it's not (meaning, most of Kiss Me and occasionally on The Top) it's a mess.
I could tell you to listen to them but what would be the fun in that?
Übereil