"and I really love the way you wear your hair and nothing more"
The Cure's 1996 release, put out on Fiction in the UK and Elektra in the states. As far as a "theme" goes, the album's title gives it away: this bipolar album runs the gamut from Strange Attraction's bittersweet mania to the depressive epic Bare; swinging from a latinesque The 13th to the mournful strings of Numb.
This is one of those albums that, despite my taste in music moving past what I listened to in middle school and high school (which, admittedly, was mainly The Cure and Joy Division... I was one of those kids), I keep coming back to. Its diversity gives the album life and listenability, although it did take some getting used to after having played Wish for the four years between the two albums. The horn arrangements are well implemented, Robert Smith's guitar work isn't as affronting as in previous efforts, and there's a song for just about every mood possible.
This album comes highly recommended, even from a closet Cure fan. If you can track down any of the singles (or locate the b-sides on Napster), your ears will thank you.
Track list:
- Want - "I'll never really get more hope, or any more time."
- Club America - "it's not too hard to guess from ... the way you so carefully couldn't care less that you're really trying very hard to impress."
- This is a Lie - "in heaven unseen and hell unknown"
- The 13th - "I know this is a big mistake, yeah, but it feels good!"
- Strange Attraction - "she'd started smoking poetry"
- Mint Car - "vanilla smile and a gorgeous strawberry kiss"
- Jupiter Crash - "so much for gravity..."
- Round & Round & Round - "how much we love them all!"
- Gone! - "oh but you do that and you're missing the world"
- Numb - "hopelessly broken apart"
- Return - "Stolichnaya! Banco de Gaia! bad timing on TV!"
- Trap - "give me a taste of my own medicine"
- Treasure - "it's better to forget than to remember me and cry"
- Bare - "there are long long nights when I lay awake and I think of what I've done, of how I've thrown my sweetest dreams away and what I've really become and however hard I try, I will always feel regret. however hard I try, I will never forget. I will never forget."
- It Used To Be Me (Japanese import only. Can also be found on one of the The 13th singles)