The Great Beauty – 30 years of The Cure’s Disintegration (1989)

The year is 1989, and The Cure is about to reach an unexpected peak of recognition and creativity by creating an album that until this day by many is considered as the masterpiece of their discography and one of the best albums of all times.

In their mystical trilogy of albums released between 1980 and 1982 (Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography), The Cure seemed to have found the sound that would define them: a completely cryptic and dark sound, whose lyrics followed the same path. But for their next 3 albums (The Top, The Head On The Door, and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me) released between 1984 and 1987, The Cure approached a much more accessible and less dense sound, which aliniated many of their initial followers attracted to the dark sound and letters they had displayed on their early albums.

By 1989, The Cure had gained a base of followers much more attracted to pop music and to mass consumption music. But with the release of their album Disintegration, The Cure astonishingly returned to their origins- to that dark, depressing and intimate sound from their beginnings, with one difference: now they were taking a much more melancholic, nostalgic and introspective direction.

All of this is quite curious, since by then the members of the band were going through the best moments of their personal and professional life on the surface. Robert Smith had recently married his high-school girlfriend Mary and was almost rehabilitated from his substance abuse problems, and the band was working quite well together. The Cure were having massive success; they were already a widely acknowledged band in the music world.

When everything seemed to be perfectly in order, the depression and agony returned to stalk Robert Smith’s mind, giving a totally unexpected and special turn to his career. Robert Smith, with more than 29 years of age, now has the sensation and fear of getting older. He feels a lot of anguish and fear for the passage of time, something that we refer to as “the 30’s crisis”. Smith turns this crisis into a journey to the deepest existential depths of the soul, transforming everything he feels into an abyss of agony and darkness. Finally ,The Cure give us a masterpiece entitled Disintegration; an album dedicated to the passage of time, to the fears of getting older, to the fears of suffering and the haunting regret of past mistakes.

A highly dramatic and symbolic event accompanied the making of Disintegration: The band experienced a fire that occurred in the place where they were working on the ideas prior to the release of the album, and the band had to walk into the fire to save the early ideas and material that were consumed by the flames. This incident served as a turning-point for Smith and the band, leading them to reorganize the ideas and concept they originally had in mind for the album. Another deep-cutting event was founding member Lol Tolhurst being expelled from the group during the recordings of the album. The reason for the expulsion were his serious problems of alcoholism, a fact that led to his disintegration from the rest of the group.

And so we are reaching the final result: Disintegration gives us a fascinating story structure in the lyrics, which go hand in hand with the sound and music that unfolds. The album is an amalgam of different musical effects and layers, and it’s full of instrumental parts that give cohesion to the different songs in it. It serves as a perfect example for the use of delays, reverberations and echoes. Robert Smith manages to create a totally captivating sound that emerges from the echoes and delays of his voice, he uses these effects in moments where he is having memories or allegations to the past with the extremely intimate, hard and personal lyrics that this album contains.

Disintegration begins with “Plainsong“, a song with a long instrumental opening that introduces us musically and conceptually to the general theme of the album, with verses like: ‘I think I’m old and I’m feeling pain, you said’, or ‘Sometimes you make me feel, like I’m living at the edge of the world’.

Subsequently, “Pictures Of You” is a song that tells about the resistance and disbelief to accept the change that the passage of time does to the people we love. The song shows us how we keep clinging to the past and remembering people with a lingering sense of evanescence and loss: “I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you, that I almost believe that they’re real“.

The Cure continue with the song “Closedown“, a mainly instrumental song that tells us about time as the effect of loss of innocence and illusions, of how one becomes insensible to the passage of time: “And uselessly always the need to feel again, the real belief of something more than mockery “, “If only I could fill my heart with love”.

The next track “Lovesong“, albeit wonderful, does not fit the theme of the album directly. Being a love song that Smith composed for his wife Mary, he knew that the song didn’t perfectly fit the album’s tone, but ended up putting it on it for his wife. “Lovesong” shows us the special view that Smith has about love, for him his love is the place he comes back to when he is hurt, that place where you rejuvenate and feel a well-being beyond of how words can describe “Whenever I ‘m alone with you, you make me feel like I am whole again… whenever I’m alone with you, you make me feel like I am young again”.

What follows is “Last Dance“, an allegory of the adolescent love that we idealize through time, a love for that you don’t feel anything anymore after you meet her again after a long time. “Last Dance” shows us that the love we had so longed for has died. It is a sample of how time is erasing the intensity of feelings in people: “But Christmas falls late now, flatter and colder. And never as bright as when we used to fall. “

“Lullaby” is a song from the childhood memories of Smith, it reminds us of the stage of childhood horror stories that did not let us sleep, the song is a regression to all the fears that used to haunt us when we were little: ”On candy stripe legs the Spiderman comes, softly through the shadow of the evening sun. Stealing past the windows of the blissfully dead, looking for the victim shivering in bed”.

“Fascination Street” is another one of the songs that are not directly related to the original theme of the album, the theme refers to “Bourbon Street” in New Orleans, and deals with the evil side of people searching for fun during night in an unknown city: “Oh it’s opening time, down on Fascination Street. So let’s cut the conversation, and get out for a bit. Because I feel like fading and paling, and I’m begging to drag you down with me.“

Later, we have one of the lyrically most spectacular songs, “Prayers For Rain“, the only song that does not make an allegory to the past, but to the anxiety caused by the future. The song is Smith’s hope to recover the illusion, hope and positivity that time is erasing. The hope of the rain is the hope that all these things arrive back, a desire is reflected in verses like: “In hopelessness and prayers for rain. I deteriorate, I live in dirt /…/ And nowhere glows but drearily and tired the hours spent waiting for the rain.”

The song “The Same Deep Water As You“, is an allegory of the passage of time reflected in water, the song refers to love that becomes destructive, toxic and harmful and is a reference on how Smith’s addiction problems and depression made him walk away and hurt his loved ones: “And disappear the ripples clear. And laughing break against your feet. And laughing break the mirror sweet. So we shall be together, so we shall be together.“

The song titled as the album Disintegration, refers to Smith’s infidelities throughout his life, told from a very sincere point of view. And giving reasons. On the one hand these acts fill his ego and self-esteem, but on the other, they generate suffering in the person who loves him: “I miss the kiss of treachery, the aching kiss before I feed. The stench of a love for a younger meat, and the sound that makes when it cuts in deep.“

Then we have “Homesick“, a song that makes reference to the periodic relapses of Smith in alcohol and drugs, the regret and frustration that gives the “slump” that these substances cause, the bad feelings of having relapsed in them: “Hey hey, just one more and I’ll walk away. All the things you win turns to nothing today.“

The album closes with the song “Untitled” that is, in the words of Smith, „so hard, so depressing that I did not know what title to put in it”. This song is one of the hardest lyrics that Smith has written, it deals with the regret of mistakes, the wrong acts, the damage done to people. A reminder of those tortuous memories that never leave you and follow you til the end, suffocating your soul and your mind. Smith tells us that those mistakes he has made will never leave him, and he will die having the guilt of having committed them: “Never remove the words to explain to you, never remove how to make them believable /…/And now the time has gone, another time undone”.

The Cure’s huge cultural influence cannot be overlooked, their style is groundbreaking and their truly unique sound is manifested in this masterpiece. Disintegration remains a mysterious, haunting, melancholic, nostalgic and overall marvelous achievement for The Cure and a beautiful gift for fans of music.

by Octavio Carbajal González