Cure

Alongside Ian Curtis, Robert Smith is the other great "guiding spirit" of so-called British "dark-wave". The two were united by the same anxieties, paranoias and depressions, and in every one of their works both gave the impression of buckling under the weight of an immense existential tragedy. But the key difference between them lies in the fact that, while Curtis surrendered to his personal tragedy without even attempting to fight it, Smith has always struggled with all his strength to escape it. Hence also the different musical approach of their respective bands: where the music of Joy Division was icy, inert and of geometric precision, that of the Cure is instead in constant, neurotic turmoil: Ian Curtis sang like a robot stripped of any emotion, while Robert Smith's tone was that of a man condemned to death, awaiting execution, anxiously searching for a possible way out. Smith never possessed Ian Curtis's shattering, mad lucidity and reflective depth, but he has always been able to boast a lyrical talent that has had few rivals in English rock of the last two decades: his streams of consciousness, so romantic (in the "literary" sense of the word), moved and inconsolable, have left a deep mark on the sensibilities of countless "dark kids".

After a crisis that in the previous two years had reduced the line-up to the trio of Smith, Simon Gallup (bass and keyboards) and Laurence Tolhurst (drums), the Cure's leader managed to reach the peak of his poetic vein, perfectly supported by his two bandmates. The three thus created their most complex and ambitious work, achieving what could be called the "perfect" dark record. An intimate, moving and desolate work, exuding an almost tangible sense of decay and disintegration.

The opening of "One Hundred Years" immediately leaves you breathless: the obsessive pounding of the electronic drums, the spectral choir of keyboards, the searing stabs of guitar set the stage for the frantic declamation of a Smith in the throes of a full nervous breakdown, who opens with the programmatic statement "it doesn't matter if we all die". If "Pornography" is the "perfect" dark album, then its opening track can easily be considered the "perfect" dark song. Regret and suffering pile up together, memories of loves and happiness now lost and visions of a meaningless world, as reaffirmed by the following "A Short Term Effect", a less convulsive track but with an even more depressed mood: "A day without substance, a change of thought", Smith proclaims, as images of death increasingly crowd in, everything seeming to have reached its end, its stillness, its eternal cold ("no movement, just a falling bird cold as it hits the bleeding ground").

"Creatures kissing in the rain, shapeless, in the dark again" populate "The Hanging Garden", a disturbing nocturnal, wintry vision, driven by a frenetic tribal rhythm, the exact opposite of the extraordinary "Siamese Twins", a hypnotic dance built on total rarefaction, an extreme dilation of time and space, performed and played as if in a trance: "I chose an eternity of this, like falling angels/ the world disappear laughing into the fire". "Figurehead" and "A Strange Day" instead pick back up the languid, relaxed cadence of "Short Term Effect", as Smith writhes ever more deliriously, but also ever more disconsolately, now surrounded by decay, tormented by nightmares and hallucinations. It's especially in the final tracks that a hugely inspired Smith dispenses genuine pearls of decadent poetry ("A Strange Day", with a surreal opening line like "give me your eyes, that I might see the blind man kissing my hands", is exemplary). And it's at this point that he intones his most painful requiem, "Cold": the long, solemn organ phrases and electronic flashes of lightning hold up a sonic scaffolding that couldn't be more gothic, as Smith finally finds the courage to confront the oppressive sense of death afflicting him: "Ice in my eyes and eyes like ice don't move/ screaming at the moon/ another past time/ your name like ice into my heart/ everything as cold as life...".

We thus end up in the infernal whirlpool of the title track, introduced by a choir of spectral voices, driven by a tribal, demonic, apocalyptic percussive crescendo, amid a sea of piercing distortions and towering electronic drones. But the most unsettling and dissonant track is also the one that manages to close the album on a note of faint hope: Smith seems to have finally found the right space in which to contain his psychoses, still dangerously on the verge of exploding ("one more day like this and I'll kill you"), but at least aware of his condition and ready to try to find peace again. It's no coincidence that the line sealing the work is another programmatic manifesto, but diametrically opposed to the one that opened it: "I must fight this sickness, find a cure".

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29/10/2006