The Cure Album: “4:13 Dream”

Picture this: Disintegration is the beautiful model you see in a glossy magazine picture, glacially gorgeous, but in some ways unapproachable. Wish is the pretty girl you see at a party, and while she may not be Disintegration-beautiful, she's a hell of a lot more fun, and a lot easier to get into. Wild Mood Swings is the plain girl with a crush on the guy that will never have any interest in her, and that only makes her try harder and harder to please him, never able to really give him what he wants or make him into her. Bloodflowers is a dark, mysterious beauty, and when she isn't busy cutting herself, she's illustrating to you that she does in fact understand something about life, love, and pain, and you just have to stick with her long enough to get her message. The Cure is just an angsty emo girl sitting in her room decrying the state of the world with embarrassingly childish notebook poetry, listening to the bands that her daddy served as the greatest influence for. And now, we have 4:13 Dream, who just so happens to be the fun, cool, pretty girl that every guy wants to be around and every girl wants to be. Suffice to say, 4:13 Dream is probably the best album the Cure have released since Wish, depending on your personal preference for Bloodflowers.

4:13 Dream opens with what is easily the best song Robert Smith has written since Disintegration, Underneath The Stars. This is a dark, swirling, brutal kind of song, washing over the listener in layers of reverb guitar and plaintive echoed cries. Smith's singing and lyrics on this track are top notch, standing as the best track on the album, and one of the best Cure openers ever. The album moves on to the fun pop of The Only One, which I reviewed at length on its release. Track three, The Reasons Why, is a Wish-era pop rocker complete with rocking riffs and some glorious embarrassing lyrics about suicide. Freakshow is a fun funk track it he vein of Why Can't I Be You? And Hot Hot Hot!!!, though it fails to light quite the dancing fire that those songs did. Sirensong is a gorgeous strummed ballad, akin to something off of Bloodflowers, if Bloodflowers weren't so completely dark, and its definitely one of the album highlights, creating a bit of respite between the string a rockers that start with The Reasons Why. The Real Snow White and The Hungry Ghost work brilliantly together, building a tension based on a mass of riffing guitar and driving bass lines, with Smith singing with vigor and great subtlety. Switch is one of my less favored tracks on the album, failing to be as dark as the Pornography sound that influences it. The Perfect Boy, which I also reviewed upon its release as a single, is a smooth pop ballad, and definitely one of the best "love songs" that Smith has written since the `80s, though the whole "love" aspect of the tune is somewhat debatable. With The Perfect Boy out of the way, This. Here and Now. With You sets up the rock roller coaster that is the final four tracks of 4:13 Dream. It's a surprisingly spry track, and one that will likely grow on listeners as opposed to having instant appeal. Sleep When I'm Dead is a solid alt rocker, but not one of the best tracks on the album, weighed down with some strange God-complex lyrics. The Scream is the brutality that Switch fails to be, closing with an epic scream the likes of which I don't think we've ever heard from Smith. Closer, It's Over, is surprisingly fast paced for a Cure closing track, but it's good and works the album into a frenzy just before its abrupt end.

All in all, 4:13 Dream is one of the best Cure records we've seen in a very long time, and I have no doubt that in years to come it will be at the top of many a fan's list. The Cure have recorded one of the best albums of the year, so don't miss out.

9.5/10

It appears that the majority of reviews for the new Cure album are favorable, and mine is no different. I grew up more of a hair metal fan in the 80's (I know...yikes), but I also dug The Cure and their eccentricities, even if I didn't have any of their albums. As I've gotten older, I've learned to appreciate them even more, and now they are at the top of my favorite band-list. This latest effort is superb, with the same melodic guitar delivery and Robert Smith's angst-driven vocals. Every song seemed to flow effortlessly into the next. There is always a comfortable quirkiness about any Cure song, and this album is no exception. They just seem to take the listener somewhere musically and emotionally that no other band can. My favorite tracks on 4:13 Dream are the fantastic opener Underneath The Stars, The Reasons Why, The Perfect Boy, and This Here And Now With You, but honestly, there isn't a bad track on here. It's all genius, as you'd expect from The Cure.

I'm not going to make this a long-winded technical review. The Cure is my favorite band, and I was thrilled to get a new CD by them. But happiness quickly took a turn for disappointment when I listened to it. The songs, in my opinion, are very good. Unfortunately, I can't enjoy them because - as other reviewers have criticized - the mixing on this CD is incredibly poor. Muddy, dissonant, unbalanced. I think that (and I say this in all seriousness) I could have gotten a better result producing this on my home computer. I don't know what they were thinking releasing this CD as is.

When Porl Thompson rejoined the Cure a few years ago, he rejuvenated the band by bringing a sense of new energy and enthusiasm to the live shows. He even seemed to regenerate the interest of Robert and company and even managed to help expand the ever-questionable future of the Cure. Not only did it renew the interest of the fanbase but it also provided us with the hope that a new album would recapture some of that Cure magic that made us fall in love with them in the first place.

Fortunately, that magic reappears instantly within the first few seconds of the opening track. With it's mark tree chimes and the lengthy instrumental introduction to Robert's soft-spoken vocals, Underneath the Stars combines all the elements of the trademark Cure sound. Some may even be surprised to learn about the song's rough beginnings, which took place in an early instrumental demo for the Wish sessions. Nonetheless, it's easily the best song on the album and it's not difficult to see why. The first single taken from the album, The Only One, is vintage Cure pop with some pretty exciting lyrics to boot. It's basically a reworking of the song High off of the Wish album, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The rest of the songs are pretty much hit and miss, although there are more hits than misses. Sirensong and The Perfect Boy are fun, romantic pop while The Hungry Ghost and The Scream are a bit darker in tone and more serious. The second single, Freakshow, is quite an adventure even for the Cure. Switch features Porl's wah-wah guitar but it's a bit redundant since we've already heard it before on the b-side All Kinds of Stuff. The Real Snow White and Sleep When I'm Dead are interesting at first listen but eventually falls flat over the long haul. The exciting and energetic It's Over completes this 4 star album. With the exception of Underneath the Stars, nothing on 4:13 Dream can be labeled as classic. But the majority of the songs are very good and enjoyable. Fans who fell in love with the band with albums like The Head on the Door and Wish will surely enjoy these songs.

While the tunes themselves are good, the audio quality of the album is horrible and leaves a lot to be desired. It's one of the worst CDs I've ever heard -- and I've heard many over the years. This is surprising, especially coming from Robert Smith who's built a reputation for releasing some excellent sounding records over the years. I would have a hard time believing that even he is satisfied with the uneven sonic mess that is 4:13 Dream. Robert's vocals are not only unclear at times, but also hard to hear when it's mixed underneath the instruments (the most obvious example of this is on the b-side Down Under). During numerous times, Porl's playing gets drowned out by all the other instruments. You can hear him making some interesting noises in the background, but what exactly he is doing is unclear. Jason's drumming on the album is sometimes buried underneath the layers of noise. Most surprisingly is Simon's bass which is muddy and is not mixed low enough to begin with. Unfortunately, the LOUD and compressed mastering done by Brian Gardner doesn't help matters at all and only contributes to the problem. At the end of the day there's not much dynamics left in the mix and there's too much compression on anything you can name. As much as I'd love to see the Mixed Up and Wish remasters out later this year, perhaps Robert should get to work on making 4:13 Dream at least somewhat listenable.

Let me state upfront that Robert Smith and I are roughly the same age (he is one year older than me) and that I essentially grew up with these guys from the late 70s on. So I have been on this ride for a long long time. After the utterly disappointing 2004 self-titled album, here again comes Robert Smith (the only remaining original band member of the Cure) with a new album, after another 4 year lay-off. I had heard/read encouraging things about the album, so I was eager to hear it when I finally had the chance.

Well then... "4:13 Dream" (13 tracks; 53 min.) is, I am sorry to say, yet another utter disappointment. I have hold off posting a review for a while, playing this album quite a bit in the last few weeks, to make sure I wasn't missing the mark, but here I am. To state it bluntly, there is only ONE track on here that bears repeated listening, and it is the opening track "Underneath the Stars", a beautiful, doomy track with a long instrumental intro, finally giving way to what is in essence a revisit to "Pictures Of You". Well done. After that, though, I hear the music, but absolutely none of the remaining tracks have any lasting impact, frankly. What a major disappointment, to say the least. Looking back, the last meaningful album of the Cure was 1996's "Wild Mood Swings", as uneven that album was, but at least it had a number of memorable songs on it. No such luck here (other than "Underneath the Stars").

I've had the good fortune of catching the Cure live in concert a number of times over the years, including in their early days in the 70s when I still lived in Belgium and they weren't the superstars yet that they would become. That said, if I have another chance to see them live, I will do so again, no questions asked. But "4:13 Dream" is simply not a great album, and I'm being mild.