![]() ![]() In the preceding months, the most scandalous news story to emerge in the UK tabloids was that Smith-whose severe employment of backcombing and Aqua Net had recently inspired the film Edward Scissorhands-had actually gotten a haircut. Smith, who had gotten married to his high school sweetheart Mary Poole just a few years earlier, turned 33 on the day Wish was released, April 21, 1992. Allen, the quintet recorded in the stately Manor Studio in the English countryside, where they lived together and plastered the walls with cartoons and poetry.Īs the sessions proceeded, there were no rumors that this would be the Cure’s final album, no dangerous drug use or health scares, no interpersonal conflicts to seep into the lyrics. Compared to previous career highs, the sessions were smooth and productive, even idyllic. This humble reputation was aided by the music’s organic, communal genesis: It arrived in a rare moment of peace. Instead, Wish is a solid record that sometimes gets overlooked due to the remarkable records preceding it and the largely disappointing work that followed. Unlike those records, Wish is not remembered as a left turn or experiment, neither the start of a bold new phase nor an unsung dark-horse favorite. In “Doing the Unstuck,” Robert Smith closes each verse with an uncharacteristic instruction: “Let’s get happy!” on Monster, they cranked up the guitars to fit in with the current crop of radio rock like Depeche Mode on Songs of Faith and Devotion, they ditched some of their signature synths in pursuit of a raw, live-band sound, complete with feedback and amplifier noise like U2 on Achtung Baby, they took pleasure in challenging expectations, which meant balancing their totems of depression with gestures toward unfettered joy. On Wish, the Cure were beginning to assume the role of a legacy band-more important for what they had done than what they were currently doing-but they still had plenty of peers. Any one song from these records has enough character, vision, and atmosphere to spawn the careers of five entirely new bands. From shoegaze to Britpop, alt-rock to post-rock, many of the prominent strains of music in the ’90s pulled from some corner of the Cure’s vast catalog, whether it was the tightly crafted post-punk of 1979’s Three Imaginary Boys or the ghostly sketches of 1981’s Faith, the devilish art-pop of 1985’s The Head on the Door or the immersive world-building of 1989’s Disintegration. Granted, plenty of those bands were citing the Cure as an inspiration. ![]()
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