Features the hits 'Pictures of You', 'Lovesong', 'Fascination Street' and 'Lullaby'. Originally released in 1989, Disintegration has come of age and has been remastered by Robert Smith to coincide with it's 21st anniversary. Digitally remastered edition of The Cure's seminal eighth album. * The Cure are performing Disintegration live exclusively to Vivid Sydney on 25, 27, 28 and 30 May.UK double 180gm vinyl LP pressing in gatefold sleeve. But then, if you were brutal about Disintegration, you’d say that’s what the album itself did, and not even a show this good for its first 45 minutes could fix that. We would have been better off without an encore at all, rather than one that had the night and its energy dribble away. There were two unreleased instrumentals from the Disintegration sessions – the second of which at least had the energy of the album’s first half – a b-side, Fear Of Ghosts, which Smith says they should have played more at that time (though there was little evidence to justify that), a couple of powerful if anonymous rock songs, and an unlikely, and unnecessary sea shanty called Pirate Ships. Spread across eight songs and not that much short of an hour, this encore was for completists and trainspotters, and patient ones at that. The album set ended on this less than ideal point, the room willing itself into believing this was a peak and offering another standing ovation, already anticipating an encore of some obscurities and some gems from the wider catalogue. In The Same Deep Water was hollow and drawn out, Disintegration was carried by momentum and the reward for the attention paid to getting the sound marvellously right in this problematic room, Homesick was a dormant lullaby wending its way in familiar colours but on unsteady feet, and Untitled was meandering and flavourless. But then, it was from that point that the problems began to build even with this charismatic centre and the none-more-Cure elements of low-slung/high note bass and rising clouds of synthesisers given thrust by circular drum patterns. In any case, that power is what controlled Prayer For Rain and almost obscured the fact that it is not that good a song. How did he do that? Was it his compelling solidity among the spinning lights and hyperactive Gallup? Was it the way a sideways glance could hint at humour? Or was it a voice which retains its power and could rise to pin us back? It was around this time that a friend elsewhere in the room messaged me to declare Smith “an amazing performer”, an incongruous description given his minimal expression and movement generally.

Last Dance and Lullaby (which even involved Smith dancing) shook lightness from potential sludge and Fascination Street balanced a metallic edge, a receding melody and a throw forward to hard rock, with an energy that was still outward and never less than danceable. The guitars danced like they were having their last chance, the bass came high and buoyant, the drums stayed mechanically insistent.Ĭlosedown and Love Song, the latter dogged in its optimism the former springing surprising euphoria from the room on the back of those rising, rising drums, were expansive. The pleasures, like the standing O, were there from the start, particularly in the way Pictures Of You picked up the promise of Plainsong and felt like a vibration of pleasure. The first 45 minutes were impressive but then the problems began.

Disintegration the cure