{"id":41223,"date":"2008-11-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/413-dream\/"},"modified":"2008-11-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-17T00:00:00","slug":"413-dream","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/413-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"4:13 Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is a dialogue that took place between a fellow pop-snob and me a few years ago. Let\u2019s call him Matt.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Matt: Ya know, Ken? There comes a time in every man\u2019s life when he\u2019s forced to make a decision, forced to choose.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Ken:\u00a0 Huh? I don\u2019t know what you\u2019re getting at. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Matt: Yeah, you know, forced to choose between The Smiths and The Cure. You have to make a choice.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Ken: Oh. You think? What an awful position to be in.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Matt: Well, not really. I mean, the same choice has to be made between The Stones and The Who.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Ken: Oh shit, man, that\u2019s easy. The Stones. Duh.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Matt: Oh totally, bro. It\u2019s The Stones for me too. But, Ken, you\u2019ve gotta make a choice: It\u2019s The Smiths — the greatest band of all time — or it\u2019s The Cure. You don\u2019t have to make a decision right now, I\u2019m just sayin\u2019 is all. You gotta be prepared at all times to answer that question. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Ken: You\u2019re insane, man. If we\u2019re talkin\u2019, like, desert island discs or something, then I\u2019d bring more Cure albums then I would Smiths albums. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Matt: Ah, dude. That\u2019s crazy talk. Robert Smith is a washed-up fat ass. You can\u2019t be serious, man. Listen to what you\u2019re saying.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Ken: Yeah, man. Right now, in this moment, today, I gotta say I\u2019m leanin\u2019 toward The Cure.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Matt: Whatever, man. You disgust me. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t worry, we\u2019re still friends. We just try to avoid talking about either band in great detail because it usually results in us hurling idiotic insults at one another. But Matt\u2019s right. At some point, any serious appreciator of music is gonna have to take sides with either The Cure or The Smiths. If you, the reader, need further clarification or require some explanation as to why it is this choice must be made, well, then you just don\u2019t care about music as much as you think you do.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tough call and depending on the day, week, month or my mood, I\u2019m still on the fence.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Robert Smith and The Cure are responsible for having conceptualized some of the most incredible music of the 1980s.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Strike that. It\u2019s some of the most incredible music of all time.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

1989\u2019s Disintegration<\/i> is one of the finest, darkest, most imaginative, most sophisticated and beautiful albums of all time; it might even be the best album of the decade. \u00a0<\/i>1987\u2019s Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me<\/i> is a close second. The Cure lost steam after Disintegration<\/i>, releasing a series of albums that — while they remain dedicated fan favorites — seemed to move further and further from the world Smith had so brilliantly created with The Cure during the 1980s. 2000\u2019s very promising Bloodflowers<\/i> seemed to indicate Smith was back on his feet again; it was hailed as the first \u201cproper\u201d Cure album to come about in years. It was strong enough to carry listeners through and past 2004\u2019s self-titled album, which was decent, if not disappointing, but overrated for sure.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The Cure\u2019s new album 4:13<\/i><\/st1:time> Dream<\/i> is their best since Disintegration<\/i>. Which is not to say that it\u2019s nearly <\/i>as good as Disintegration<\/i>; it doesn\u2019t even come close. But of all The Cure albums released since then, 4:13<\/i><\/st1:time> Dream<\/i> is far and away the strongest. The record is splattered with tightly arranged, uppity pop gems, and all of them are carried by Smith\u2019s signature vocals, which sound better than ever. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Album opener \u201cUnder The Stars\u201d takes the cake as the best on the record. It\u2019s so good and so utterly \u201cThe Cure\u201d that it would have no trouble finding a home on any pre-1990 Cure album. It\u2019s a slow burner, it\u2019s long-winded, and it\u2019s breathtaking. The band released four singles from the record prior to its release and all four (\u201cThe Only One,\u201d \u201cFreakshow,\u201d \u201cThe Perfect Boy,\u201d and \u201cSleep When I\u2019m Dead\u201d) served as a strong indication that The Cure were up to their old tricks again\u2026in the good way. The four singles are nestled amongst a thirteen-track record where they\u2019re forced to battle it out with a wealth of equally strong material, namely \u201cThe Reasons Why,\u201d which sounds like it\u2019s straight off of 1985\u2019s The Head On The Door<\/i>. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to note that despite the strength of the material offered on 4:13<\/i><\/st1:time> Dream<\/i>, it\u2019s only really strong when it\u2019s being compared to the 1990-2004 Cure era albums. It\u2019s hard to imagine, at this point, Smith and company ever being able to match the genius of their output from 1977 to 1989. But for a band who has been around for just over thirty years, 4:13 Dream<\/i> is a shit-hot record, even if it ain\u2019t strong enough to knock me off the fence and choose definitively between The Cure and their nemeses The Smiths. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":29625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6048],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-41223","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-cure","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41223"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41223"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}