The Cure took
4 years to follow up their weakest album Wild Mood Swings. Here the mood swung towards gloom with 2000’s
Bloodflowers. Billed as the third in a
trilogy incorporating 1982’s P0rn0gr@phy and 1989’s Disintegration, it was
clear that no Love Cats or In Between Days would be found here. The band set the bar high by referencing two
of their classic albums.
In the main,
the album doesn’t disappoint. There are
no real standout tracks. What we have
instead are lengthy, unhurried tracks featuring Robert Smith’s guitar
prominently and some bleak lyrics. It
opens with Out of This World, which sets the tone for the album as Smith
wearily sings lines like “we always have to go back to real lives” over sighing
guitars and some almost chirpy keyboards.
Watching Me
Fall is a full-on descent into darkness and despite some fine guitar, is the
most overblown moment on the album at eleven minutes, matched only by Smith’s
wail against the offset of old age on 39 (“the fire is almost out”). But the prevailing mood on the album is not
darkness, more a sort of wistful gloom over almost interchangeable tracks like
Where The Birds Always Sing, Maybe Someday and The Last Day of Summer, all
strummed guitars and washes of keyboards.
Doomed romance
rears its ugly head in There Is No If… as Smith sings of “remember the first
time I told you I love you, it was raining hard”… and “‘if you die’ you said,
‘so do I’ you said” over impossibly pretty guitars. The Loudest Sound incorporates a trip-hop
beat which remarkably doesn’t ruin the song, allowing Robert Smith to
contribute some fine guitar lines.
In keeping
with Cure tradition, proceedings are brought to a close with the title track,
seven and a half minutes of descending guitars as only the Cure can quite pull
off as Smith wails “these flowers will never die”.
The album
captures an autumnal mood remarkably well, though avoid like the plague if you
only like the Cure’s singles.
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