The Cure: Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

The Cure: Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

1987

Elektra Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl and Compact Disc

Track Listing: Disc 1: 1. The Kiss  2. Catch  3. Torture  4. If Only Tonight We Could Sleep  5. Why Can't I Be You?  6. How Beautiful You Are...  7. The Snakepit  8. Hey You!!!

Disc 2: 1. Just Like Heaven  2. All I Want  3. Hot Hot Hot!!!  4. One More Time  5. Like Cockatoos  6. Icing Sugar  7. The Perfect Girl  8. A Thousand Hours  9. Shiver and Shake  10. Fight



Although it's definitely not my favorite Cure album now, "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me" was absolutely the album that started my Cure obsession...An epic double album, it's the most Cure-iest of Cure albums...Almost like a little world full of colorful (and sometimes dangerous) exotic locales, it's easy to get overwhelmed and lost....

The album is odd, in that it feels overlong, but it's impossible to figure out exactly what to cut...Nearly all of the songs are strong. On the first few listens the fourth side seems particularly weak, but this is all an illusion...For proof of this,  listen to the second record first sometime (the sequencing never seemed that important anyway on this album, since it's many moods and styles are so compartmentalized...) and realize the same feeling of fatigue sets in somewhere around "The Snakepit" as it does when you get around to "A Thousand Hours"...Like you simply cannot take another bite...I honestly think it's just the fact that about 50 minutes of this stuff is all that a reasonable person can take...So if you ask me, "would this album be better as a single album?" I'd still have to say, "no." It wouldn't make any difference...

Again, it's an album to get lost in...You should feel homesick and spent while listening to it...Is the endless ocean of wah-wahed guitars and turbulent bass guitar on "The Kiss" two minutes or ten hours? It's hard to tell sometimes...Does "The Snakepit" really extend on until the end of time? Yes, I think it does...One thing I do know, the addition of uptempo soul-funk to the Cure sound is welcome, indeedy..."Hot, Hot, Hot!!!" and "Why Can't I Be You?" are party-starters for sure!



And the band is nice enough to toss us a few fine pop songs along the way..."Catch" is the most delicate distillation of their sound yet, and Robert's laid-back delivery is much easier on the ears than usual...If his histrionics are too much for you sometimes, you actually might like this track...New-wave swooners like "The Perfect Girl" and "How Beautiful You Are..." hit the sweet spot also...By the way, "How Beautiful You Are... " has one of my favorite opening lines:

"You want to know why I hate you?
Well I'll try and explain..."

For some reason that cracks my shit up... It sounds so reasonable yet unreasonable...I think I'm going to start saying that to people, "Huh? You want to know why I despise you so much...Alright, I'll tell you...Do you got a minute?"  Spoiler alert: It turns out he's talking about a pretty girl who ends up treating an old man and some poor, ragged children cruelly for being drawn to her beauty...The story really draws you in somehow, and you find yourself in the narrator's shoes, hating the girl too! God, these guys are good...



And then there's the big one...It took some time, but "Just Like Heaven" seems to have emerged as the Cure song in the public consciousness...It's not my personal favorite song by the group, but it's hard to argue against it...Everything about it is so iconic...The immortal opening bassline, the "she said" lyrics, Robert moaning, "I must have been asleep for days..." To me, the band has always sounded most convincing at the melancholic romance than the suicidal depression...

I do think the album deserves a stronger closer than "Fight" though...Can you imagine if they'd whipped up a monumental finish for the album? It'd probably help Side Four feel more alive than it does, in the same way that "Just Like Heaven" energizes Side Three...I think when I was talking about the seeming randomness of the sequencing earlier, that it uncharacteristically pounds to a close with an alright-ish industrial rocker epitomizes this feeling....

Ultimately, if you're looking to get into the Cure, I'd still recommend "The Head on the Door" over this, however your collection is nowhere near complete without it...There are a lot of definitive moments for the band here...And more than anything, this seemed to put them over the top here in the US...Classic, if not always the easiest album to sit through...

(Wow...Is it just me or did I stay 100% on topic today? I think I deserve a cookie or something...Is beer still considered a cookie?)

Here's  "The Perfect Girl" by the Cure...Enjoy....