Albums Of The Year No. 13

Tonight we have:

13. The Cure- 4:13 Dream



The Cure are one of those bands that will be given loads of praise with each album they release, but about a year later everyone will deny giving them any praise at all. It's a shame really as they're one of the finest bands ever, consistently releasing fantastic albums. 4:13 Dream is no exception at all, continuing their habit of making brilliant albums.

It starts of typically melancholic with 'Underneath The Stars', and absolutely epic track with beautiful washes of guitar and Robert Smiths lovelorn lyrics. Then the album suddenly goes quite pop. 'The Only One', 'The Reasons Why' and 'Freakshow' are all very catchy and poppy songs, though as ever, with Robert Smiths cynicism underlying the lyrics. 'The Only One' in particular is fantastic, a classic Cure pop song with wavey guitars and Robet Smith at his giddiest. The comparisons to 'Just Like Heaven' aren't for granted definately, as it has a similar vibe.

And that similarity to Cure of old is a template for the entire album. There's no genre pushing or innovation like on older Cure albums, but '4:13 Dream' is like a consolidation of styles the band has covered before. There's the pop of albums like 'Wish' and 'The Head On The Door' present in songs like 'Sirensong' (a really beautiful song slow song) and 'The Perfect Boy', whilst there's also the heavier stylings of the band in 'The Real Snow White' and 'It's Over' (this being the obligatory song about Robert Smith wanting to give it all up). 'The Scream' seems to harken back to their early 80's sound of 'Seventeen Seconds', seeing as it's full of synths and reverbing guitars.

A consolidation of previous styles or not, '4:13 Dream' still contains fantastic songs in it's own right. 'The Hungry Ghost' is one of the best songs Robert Smith has written in years, a weird combination of a more rock sound with perfect pop harmonies, with Smith at his most desperate best. 'This. Here And Now. With You' has a delightfully heavy bassline to it, along with more fantastic lyrics courtesy of Smith. Whilst it's full of the usual dark side of The Cure, '4:13 Dream' might weirdly be the most optimistic album they've written since 'Wild Mood Swings'. The music is noticeably happier than usual, even for all of it's dark meanderings, like The Cure are genuinely having fun recording the album.

Overall, it's not the most innovative album they've ever released, but with '4:13 Dream' The Cure have created another fantastic pop album, which hopefully will not be slated in a years time by the rest of the world.