Spinning On That Dizzy Edge - Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me by The Cure

If there is one thing perhaps more than any other that has attracted me to an artist or band - and more importantly KEPT me there - it is those who have shifted around the most, kept me guessing the most, even sometimes as a result disappointed me the most. I've never been a member of the "I love EVERYTHING my favourite band has ever done" school - that is utter bunkum, and the more so the longer the career lasts; give me the same record over and over and I will get bored at times - allow for experiments and exploration of personal tastes over the marketplace, and there are bound to be (worthy) mis-steps. More so than a lot of bands, I think The Cure illustrate this perfectly. Of course, in the mainstream interpretation of the band you don't always get too far away from 'doomy goth rockers', the mainstream there effortlessly retaining it's 'Missing The Point' award for at least the 87th year running. However another well trodden path is that which hangs the 'schizophrenic' tag around the group's neck just cos they've done a few 'pop songs' as well, yet this is done just as erroneously - it is usually implied using the incorrect literal interpretation of the word (from the Greek roots skhizein ("to split") and phrēn ("mind")) to denote the stereotypical 'split personality'. If anything given the regular changing of personnel - in and out of the band, and of instrumental duties within the band, as well as Robert Smith's work with Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Glove - the restlessness of the group's sound makes sense. It is as much the shifting sands underneath and around The Cure as it is any kind of fractured singularity determining everything. The Group's desire to embrace this at an identity level rather than try to merely coast along it, allows their sound to develop more memetically - less interested in what it can be labelled as than what it just is and what it creates. For me, where the most coherent, contained and fully realised Cure album is Disintegration - even their most clinical, though how you can use that word alongside songs such as Plainsong, Pictures Of You and Untitled I'm not sure - MY particular favourite is Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (1987). Yes you can see the shifts coming, as quirkier, more eclectic and quintissentially ENGLISH style pop music invaded their work following the statuesque, post-punk austerity of the Seventeen Seconds / Faith / Pornography era. Let's Go To Bed (1983 single), The Caterpillar (from The Top) and Inbetween Days & Close To Me (from The Head On The Door) introduced syncopated dance beats, dissonant acoustics, panoramic pop and languid grooves (respectively) into the pot alongside the more expected fayre of Kyoto Song, Push or Shake Dog Shake. Given there has been talk of gigs doing The Top, The Head On The Door and Kiss Me... in their entirity, it is timely to bring this record into the forefront. Yet a key thing of Kiss Me... is that it is timeless - it doesn't sound like 1987; there's something about the times they were created in about Let's Go To Bed , Faith, Pornography - not this; yes there's darkness but there are so many other shades as well. Also, it is a proper double album - not just a collection of long songs ( one minute shorter than Disintegration, but with 5 more songs (6 if you got the vinyl)) it sprawls and meanders like doubles should. The Kiss opens the album with a forbidding drone which is then accompanied by a undulating, coruscating guitar figure and Smith delivering a suitably manic vocal. It also does one of those slightly nerdy things that I really like, namely the first lyric sung is the title of the album. I dont know if that was always planned or if it came from a DEARTH of ideas for a title (as in how R.E.M. came up with the title of Reveal through chucking a dart at the lyrics and it landing on the phrase "Have I missed the big reveal?" from I've Been High) - but I just really like it. Catch follows and is utterly peerless - if Blur make classic English pop songs a la the Kinks, The Small Faces, et al then it's a crime that The Cure do not share the same status PURELY BECAUSE OF CATCH. There has to be a parallel universe where this song is on the same level as Angels (only without the being completely and utterly awful thing.....). A couple of minutes of patulous, pining melodics, strings that sound so lonely they could die, and then ....."I used to sometimes try to catch her, but never even caught her name". Forgive me, I need a moment......

Why Can't I Be You? is nothing short of a pop funk masterpiece, playful, joyous and unconstrained. This unexpected grooviness is taken even further on Hot Hot Hot!!! To misquote George Clinton, who says a rock band can't play funk? A less funky looking band you couldn't ever imagine (I mean really, look at the clip of them.....I dont care if he did get his hair cut for the video and started to channel his inner Suggs), but this track sits comfortably on any funk playlist you'd care to craft (and if you care at all you will have crafted one...).

If Only Tonight We Could Sleep introduces sitar type sounds given over to almost proggy landscapes. As on tracks such as The Kiss, A Thousand Hours and Snakepit the music is allowed space to unfurl before the vocals arrive. Yes there IS immediate, instant pop going on here, but at the same time the band seem perfectly confident inhabiting this space. How Beautiful You Are is a dress rehearsal for Lovesong (as A Thousand Hours is for Plainsong in parts...) ; One More Time coos effortlessly along on a fluted synth motif. Just Like Heaven is even more perfect pop, glacial synths searing through the initial guitar jaunt. Almost as good as Catch...... almost. Perfect Girl is yet another slice of slightly bent, off-centre pop, but not so quirky that it loses your attention.

Like Cockatoos illustrates the proper double album ethos in full flow - an apparently inconsequential bit of fluff that nevertheless compliments the whole perfectly; sounding fantastically chucked together and yet appearing fully formed. Torture & All I Want point to the more familiar Cure-sound, nothing at all wrong with them, and they fit the album well; maybe it is just the heights of some of their companion pieces that they are simply damned by unfair comparison. Shiver & Shake brings back in some of the growling bass and rumbling agression of the opening track, before Fight closes us out in a similar vein, creating a sturdy bookending for the myriad delights and sensations that the rest of the record offers up. The band went pretty stellar after this album ; it caught on in the USA and led to the monolithic success they had with Disintegration. I'm not sure they ever sounded as puckish and whimsical again - but as alluded to earlier, if you make an album as timeless as Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me then you probably don't need to. What would be - is - a fulsome and significant back catalogue actually - ONLY - reaches a special level because The Cure were expansive and brave enough to make THIS record.