The Cure's Disintegration 33 1/3
by Andi Harriman
Big thanks to Bloomsbury Academic and NetGalley for sharing
one of the latest in their 33 1/3 series of great albums. This one is on one of
my favorite albums, which was also one of the albums that was instrumental in
shaping my later musical tastes, The Cure’s Disintegration by Andi Harriman.
I’m so glad that there is a 33 1/3 book about The Cure, and especially about
what many believe to be their best album, 1989’s Disintegration. Herriman’s
approach to documenting the album is excellent as she explores the band’s prior
discography and how their sounds was influenced both by the changing nature of
punk and post-punk in late 70s and early 80s Britain, as well as pressure to
record pop singles while also maintaining a sense of artistic integrity and individual
voice in their music. Herriman frames Disintegration as the pinnacle of
The Cure’s oppositional battle between these forces that ended up confounding
reviewers and record execs at first, but has, over time, resulted in what many
consider to be the band’s most lauded album. However, what also sets this book
apart from other 33 1/3 entries is Harriman’s analysis of The Cure’s work with
19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire. Harriman cites examples
of Baudelaire’s poetry and life to explore similarities to The Cure’s music and
lyrical content, as well as how the author of Fleur du Mal’s dark and
decadent life mirrored some of the gothic intonations of Disintegration.
I really appreciated the way this book is structured, as
Harriman provides a useful analysis of The Cure’s work up to Disintegration,
which helped me to understand how the same band that wrote poppy punk songs
like “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Jumping Someone Else’s Train” followed them up with
albums like Faith, Seventeen Seconds, and Pornography. She also
takes a close look at some of the poppier albums that followed, including The
Head on the Door and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. It was interesting
to see how such an iconic band were constantly evolving their sound and the
various sources (and substances) that influenced their changing sounds. The Cure
is not only known for their unique sound but also their unique look which many
attribute to the Goth style. Harriman also explores some of the genesis of
Robert Smith and band members’ style, which at times seems to result from
comfort as well as a kind of insecurity of being on stage and singing. Harriman
also explores the origins and influences of some of The Cure’s songs, which
again was interesting to learn more about. However, I loved reading Harriman’s
connections between Baudelaire’s work and aspects of The Cure’s songs and
style. Baudelaire is such an interesting writer, influenced by Poe, but also
uniquely French, he wrote poems and short vignettes that straddled the era of
Romanticism and Modernism, yet managed to also create a kind of decadent style
that celebrated the fleeting feelings of passion and emotion while also
acknowledging the impending decay and rot that frequently follows these
pleasures. It’s been a while since I last read Fleur du Mal, so I
appreciated Harriman’s inclusion of some of the texts, particularly the poems titled
“Spleen”. Harriman not only examines the earlier beliefs in humors, and how the
spleen was thought to hold some of the darker humors that influenced feelings
like melancholy, but also how Baudelaire’s work shifted the notion of the grotesque
and ugliness from evil to something beautiful and sublime. She includes the
opening lines, translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay, as “if I lived a thousand
years I could not be more crammed with dubious souvenirs. There’s no old chest
of drawers bulging with deeds and bills, Love-letters, locks of hair, novels,
bad verses, wills, That hides so many secrets as my wretched head;- It’s like a
mausoleum, like a pyramid, Holding more heaped unpleasant bones than a Potter’s
Field;”. These lines resonate so much with me, as well as the title that is
sometimes applied to this “Spleen” poem, “The Sphinx.” Even before delving into
the analysis of Disintegration, I could see the relevance of Baudelaire’s
lines to songs like “Lullaby” and “Pictures of You”, which are both haunting
and romantic in their own dark way. Additionally, noting “The Sphinx” title
adds to the mysterious and ominous nature of the music and lyrics of The Cure,
where the ambiguity points to both love and loss, remembrance and fading,
pleasure and pain.
Harriman includes other references to Baudelaire’s work
throughout her book, but it’s the last two chapters (before the outro) that
detail the creation of Disintegration, which is fascinating to learn
more about as well. As the band gradually shifted from original member Lol Tollhurst
due to his waning influence, alcoholism, and inability to learn new synthesizer
technology, Smith brought in other musicians, who added to and helped shape the
evolving sound of the band, bringing it back to darker more melancholic sounds
found on earlier albums. Yet, there is something different to the sound of Disintegration,
possibly shaped by Smith’s turning 30 and his marriage that filled the album
with a sense of fleeting pleasure and the darker side of romanticism. As Harriman
notes with Baudelaire, his poetry “rejected the empty gestures of romanticism
without losing the heroic energy.” The Cure’s sound feels similar to this
notion in that there’s such emotion and feeling in their music, but it doesn’t
traffic in the traditional romantic tropes. The pain is not just loss, but the
kind of ennui that longs for a time passed that will never return. Even
analyzing the cover, which features a faded, almost underwater looking image of
Robert Smith surrounded by flowers and other obscured images, suggests
something uncanny, familiar, yet distant and fantom-like, observable, but out
of reach. Harriman examines how songs like “Pictures of You”, “Love Song”, and
Lullaby”- some of the singles from the album, represent this kind of fleeting
feeling. Furthermore, she notes how videos helped the band add to the goth
imagery of love and loss. I loved reading about the “Lullaby” song and video,
since that was always one of my favorites, despite being haunted and frightened
by the video when I was younger. It was interesting to learn that Smith’s own
childhood and his fascination with mouths added to the creation of this song. I
also found it interesting that the band thought that “Fascination Street” was
the one song that didn’t quite fit on the album and presented as the US single.
I think “Fascination Street” might have been my first exposure to The Cure, and
I loved the bass line and guitar feedback and reverb in that song. Beyond the analysis
of the album’s contents, Harriman also details how the album was created, with
the band moving into a rented old home in the British countryside, and how a fire
nearly destroyed the lyrics for the album. I really enjoyed learning more about
the creative process, and how the band all ended up bringing demos and ideas for
each other to listen to and vote on for inclusion on the album. It was fascinating
to learn more about the creative process that was involved in developing and
producing this amazing album.
I absolutely loved this book, not just because Disintegration
is one of the formative albums of my youth that I still listen to today, but also
because of Harriman’s fresh approach to analyzing music and literature, noting
the similarities between Baudelaire’s own trailblazing style that pushed past
the “hollow frills of Romanticism in order to inject its emptiness with the
bulbous, uncomfortable tragedies of his damned existence” noting hos “His words
are struggles between the virtuous and the immoral, a bouquet of calamitous cavorts
with the devil himself.” She goes on to note the oppositions at play in Disintegration,
and how “anxiety and pleasure converge in heaps within an immense fortress of
sound. A love, an obsession, for the grotesque and the horrible.” It’s a
beautiful synthesis that helps to unlock some of the bulging drawers filled with
haunting “Memories, nightmares. Messy, shattered dreams.” Both this book and Disintegration
the album are a trip down a melancholy lane, reveling in the oddities and
sadness we feel along the way. Highly recommended!
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