It took me a while to decide what kind of review I wanted to do for this first post. I mean, it’s sort of a landmark, isn’t it? Anyways, I came to the conclusion that I should make this review one with some sort of meaning to me. So I decided to review an album that I consistently refer to as one of my “top ten favorite albums of all time.”
The Cure has always held a special place in my heart, and the reasons for that are endless, but there is one reason that tops them all. Many bands of the varying alt-rock genre write most of their songs in a similar fashion, but one runs into a problem when trying to classify The Cure’s musical style. From experimental industrial type songs like “One Hundred Years” to bubblegum pop songs like “Mint Car,” The Cure does it all.
The Cure has a tendency of experimenting with styles from album to album, such as Disintegration, which revolves around an overall deep gothic rock sound, and Faith, which revolves around a more ambient experience. With that said, I’d like to bring attention to this week’s album, The Head on the Door, because this album is not necessarily an experiment in any specific type of sound, but more of a cluster of stylistic ingenuity.
The album starts off with “In Between Days.” This simple up-beat pop chart does an excellent job at pulling you into the rest of the album. The next track however makes a drastic change in styles. “Kyoto Song” pulls you in further with its ambient oriental sound. This song is also where Robert Smith begins escalating his emotions with many slow vocal builds and declines. “The Blood” hits you up with another drastic change in styles, now experimenting with a Latin/Indian make-up fronted by a powerful yet beautifully driven acoustic chord progression.
The album sinks back into a pop sound with “Six Different Ways” but instead twists the sound slightly by adding a hint of ambience and electronic elements. I really adore how bubbly Smith sings this song, and with the slightly seducing sound to his voice it really comes together well.
The next four songs experiment with the variations of instrumental to vocal intensities. “Push” keeps the same type of style as “In Between Days” yet brings the tempo down slightly and relies more on the instrumentals to build and push the vocals. “The Baby Screams” inverses the concept of “Push” and has Smith’s vocals lead the instrumentals. “Close To Me” is an instrumental minimalism experiment, using nothing more than a basic drum beat, hand claps, a quiet bass line and a small array of simple synth riffs. This group of four songs ends with “A Night Like This” where the vocals and instrumentation rely on each other, constantly switching intensities for the sole purpose of driving the song to the next level.
“Screw” is a heavily bass driven song that has three instrumental parts behind the drums and vocals, each emphasizing different beats of the drums, yet not emphasizing each other. The three sounds come together forming an excellent industrial sort of sound. The album closes beautifully with the track “Sinking,” in which Smith’s vocals slowly become more intense throughout the first three quarters of the song until he finally lets it all out in the last refrain and falling out as the rest of the band slowly sinks away to nothing.
If I had to pick a few key tracks off the album I would probably suggest “In Between Days,” “Six Different Ways,” “Close To Me” and “A Night Like This,” but in all actuality, the album is not best in small quantities. The album presents itself best in its entirety, but if you are one who loves listening to single tracks as opposed to whole albums, these selected tracks are indeed excellent.
It’s very hard to find an album in the alt-rock category whose tracks do such an amazing job complimenting each other, but this one definitely does it, and does it with style.
No comments:
Post a Comment