The sad news is The Cure is still depressed.
Lead singer Robert Smith, a year shy of 50, has spent much of his career crafting accessible mopey tunes for miserable teens. Though the English rock band's dabbled in Goth rock, post-punk and new wave over its 30 year career, its latest album 4:13 Dream is more precisely an exercise in breezy alternative rock.
Thirteen isn't a terribly lucky number, but this is The Cure's 13-track 13th studio album and it's not helping the band escape its sulk stupor.
The band went from a five-piece to a four-piece, signifying the four in 4:13 Dream.
For casual fans of The Cure, this is not a bad next step. For those who have heard most of the group's work, 4:13 Dream is perhaps a melancholic bore.
For the past 16 years, The Cure has released an album every four years, and thanks to multiple delays of its latest release date, this album falls in line. A few of the tracks were recycled from older recording sessions, such as "Sleep When I'm Dead," a song originally written for the band's 1985 album The Head on the Door.
A strong scent of the '80s contributes to this retread of the same old Cure sound. For example, on the mid-tempo "The Reasons Why," Smith sings "I won't try to bring you down about my suicide/If you promise not to sing about the reasons why."
The tracks escalate in ferocity from the soft opening to the energetic, irascible close.
The first track, "Underneath The Stars," is a slow, dreary tone-setter that spends its six minutes drenched in ambiance and echo effects.
"The Real Snow White" has a unique modern sound that could have been recorded by The Cure's footstep followers, Franz Ferdinand or The Killers. "The Scream" is the album's hardest, heaviest and next to last track, the morphing of a shouting Smith and the foreground drums and guitar into one.
After all these years, Smith's perpetually inconsolable attitude seems increasingly like a gimmick, squeezing it for all its worth by "reinventing" themselves post-'90s slump with a self-titled 2004 album and re-recording decades-old B-sides for Dream.
When I think of The Cure, I typically think of how an '80s John Hughes teen film would have ended if Molly Ringwald and her dream gent hadn't gotten together. Tears, stifled angst and a prom dress stained with mascara and punch, only Smith's the damsel in the dress.
Smith's prescription for daydream malaise is a serviceable remedy, but careful not to overdose.
Sounds Like: New Order
Download: "The Real Snow White"
Grade: C
