The Cure: Wish

The Cure: Wish

1992

Elektra Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Open  2. High  3. Apart  4. From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea  5. Wendy Time  6. Doing the Unstuck  7. Friday I'm in Love  8. Trust   9. A Letter to Elise  10. Cut  11. To Wish Impossible Things  12. End




Oh yes, I remember when this album came out...Vividly...I had recently fell head-over-heels in love with "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me" and when the cassette of this suddenly appeared on the shelves (and "Friday I'm in Love" started appearing on the radio), I hit the lawn mower and earned some cash...

"There, I spent 5 hours mowing your 40 acre lawn...That'll be five dollars, please..."

To this day, when I listen to this album I still sometimes catch a faint whiff of lawn clippings and gasoline and suddenly I'm acne-studded and wearing a Simpsons T-shirt again...

  I don' really know what I'm wearing in this picture...It appears to be a white skirt or something...I don't really recall wearing skirts but nothing would surprise me, really...I was just talking about this the other day, how back in the late 80's/early 90's the only eyeglasses you could find were 10 feet tall and 8 feet wide....And I'd make the worst choices too...

"I'll take the ones with the tiger print...I bet people won't fuck with me when they get a load of these babies...Roar!.. And if I get the lenses tinted it'll look  like I'm wearing the biggest, baddest pair of shades ever...Yes, I choose the no. 15 Shading..."Smoky wine"...Look out, ladies..."

And while you're at it, check out that long, lustrous mullet...I'm pushing bald now, as you can see in this picture of me taken at the Time Out lounge yesterday...

Alright, I didn't invite you here to look at stupid pictures of me...I invited you here so I can defend "Friday, I'm in Love"...

A lot of the group's fans tend to treat it like it's some dumb pop trifle unworthy of the great Cure...The band selling themselves out for a bit of radio airplay....But I disagree...I love the song! It's the Cure tackling British Invasion pop and having a bit of fun with their mopey image, with Robert acting like every day's the end of the world except Friday...And I personally relate to that sentiment...Notice the name of this blog isn't the Monday Morning Record party...Besides, compare this song to Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA" or anything in the Black Eyed Peas discography and then talk to me about dumb pop trifles and trolling for airplay...

Besides, "High" is a waaaay dopier pop song than "Friday I'm in Love." Man, I can't stop thinking about that video they did for it with Robert flying around on the kite...lol...I almost feel like it's something I dreamed...Like there's no way they made that video...Like I'm remembering it wrong...But nope...Here it is...

But I like "High" too...I find its unguarded happiness kind of endearing...The only song on here that I dislike is the tasteless funker "Wendy Time" which is the only bomb-ola on the record...I can't understand it...Prior to this album, the group knew how to effectively utilize funk to their advantage, but they miss the mark so completely here (see "Club America" from "Wild Mood Swings" for another example of the band's mishandling of the genre)...

I think what I love best about this album is the focus on guitar...I can't help it...I love guitars...Can't get enough of 'em...And the band piles them on with this album with six-string epics like  "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea," de-emphasizing the keyboard drone that helped characterize "Disintegration." Which I think was the right move for the post-"Nevermind" guitar-based alternative explosion that was going on at this time...(Although, I do have to say, whenever "To Wish Impossible Things" comes on, I'm always fooled into thinking it's "Lullaby" for a second or two...)

The best of these guitar epics is the album closer, "End," which, to me, is the perfect Cure song...Thick layers of ringing guitars that gradually build in crashing intensity while Robert shouts his mantra, "Please stop loving me...I am none of these things..."  You'll find yourself holding your lighter high, like it was 1992...I don't think people do the lighter thing at shows anymore...

 I think you hoist your cellphone or something now...Unfortunately, you can't light your concert doob with a cellphone, so don't throw away those lighters just yet...

"Wish" has become one of the Cure albums I listen to the most now...Some of their more critically acclaimed works can seem like a bit too much of a commitment to me at times...I don't always feel like being drowned in an all-consuming tide of melancholy, or take a double-album length trip to alien worlds...Sometimes I just want some smart, catchy pop-rock and this is exactly what "Wish" is...No grand concept or mood-based trilogies here...And I think that's why this feels much shorter and breezier than the albums immediately preceding it, despite sharing a similarly bloated running time...This, to me, is the height of the "Mature" Cure style...All highs and lows flattened out and consistency achieved...

Here's "End" by the Cure...