"4:13 Dream" by the Cure

but god no comparison with the s/t I find. I mean "It's Over" (ie. the fat bombastic cousin of "Shiver & Shake") effortlessly trashes that last album's attempts to "rock".

Have you heard the 2nd half?

O_O

omg "The Scream"

btw why do the drums sound so HORRIBLE

I've had The Hungry Ghost stuck in my head for nearly a week now.
Live version is superior though

omg "The Scream"

Indeed.

Mind you, I'm wondering what Siouxsie thinks about a Cure album with songs called "The Scream" and "Switch."

Live versions of everything on this album are better because the drums are completely muffled.

Nah I'd say half of them work better on record, cf. This here now with you or The Real Snow White (ie I guess the weirder songs)

Haha soooo loving this

"Annoying use of compression though, but that is 2008. :("

agreed, it almost sinks the album. luckily the songs are strong enough to almost forgive it, but I can't listen to the entire thing straight through.

Haha soooo loving this

As soon as that bass line started...

srsly I cannot handle how much I am loving "The Scream", holy shit

also "Underneath The Stars" but I already knew I loved that song

"Hungry Ghost" is my fave so far.

Truly have not been worth a shit since Boris Williams left.

Well, you don't really belong on this thread, then, do you?

Listening to "The Scream" now. Wonderful. See, I'm not as familiar with the last half of this album as I am the first, yet.

"I think the arrangement on "Freakshow" is middlingly dull, "neither this nor that" in a sense"

This is exactly what I like about Freakshow.
Also, I really like those muffled drums!

I didn't care about Freakshow until they added that wah-wah guitar hook

I find it very good: fractured, dislocated, not-really-there - always good things in a pop song.

"Switch" is also really, really great. I have to agree with Ned's comment upthread; Siouxsie must be seething about this album!

That's one the few things(along with "Sirensong") that hasn't really clicked with me so far.

"Switch" I meant

"Switch" is good but I think needs another listen from me but "The Scream" is the best thing they've done in a "Wailing Wall"/"Like Cockatoos" vein since who knows how long. Album's gelling for me very quickly after three listens.

off topic, but some interesting covers on this new tribute album

Ha, "Sirensong" and "Switch" were the first two songs I really liked on my initial listen (hadn't made it to "The Scream" or "It's Over")

re: that tribute album, I would really, really, REALLY like to see someone do a covers album where every song was from WMS or later.

JESU "THE FUNERAL PARTY"

!

listening to this now via the myspace page. this is worth the price of the album alone. jesu(s) fucking christ, this is gorgeous.

Yeah, supposedly I'm getting a copy of that shortly. And I agree with Dan!

I think I'm alone in loving Bat for Lahses, but I really really dig her cover of A Forest

"Underneath the Stars" (duh!), "Scream", and "Hungry Ghost" off this are definitely my frontrunners off this so far. But listening to that JESU cover of "Funeral Party" makes me realized I would love to hear them make something new that is along the minimalistic lines of that. Could be an interesting turn.

About that putative double-album plan:

I mean, you'd expect the Cure - a band with past double opus form, thanks to 1987's Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me - to be able to release a double album, right? Er, sadly not. Their new album 4:13 Dream is the "light" first half of a double collection, with the second "dark" half to be released separately in 2009.

Robert Smith recently told me the rather shocking factors behind the release strategy. Basically, Geffen were only prepared to pay them royalties equivalent to a single album, even if the album was priced as a double. In effect the label were penalising the band for wanting to give their fans more music for less. Smith insisted he didn't care about making any more money but the principle was paramount; he was furious at the idea of a major label conning him out of making the record he wanted. So he held back the second half of the album for six months and one day later, the earliest moment that his contract permitted. The concept would be intact, it would just be up to the fan to Sellotape the two "episodes" together.

Because songs like "The Scream" and "It's Over" are so light!

So the title will be 11:15 Nightmare or something.

Seriously excited for that other half!

Interesting! i don't really understand the last 3 sentences though

So it's gonna get even DARKER? Great news! I dunno, overall this album seems to have a lot of anger/frustration/exasperation in it, to me, though I do need to give it some more plays all the way through.

in all honesty, i probably didn't enjoy this quite as much as i'd hoped -- largely because "underneath the stars" stopped me dead in my tracks and nothing else quite lived up to that. what is it about the cure and opening tracks? honestly, my adoration of "plainsong" has probably fucked my enjoyment of the rest of "disintegration" for ever.

that said: there's something enveloping and enticing about this album that was sorely missing from the last one. i think that when i listen again, without thinking O JOY ALL THE SONGS MIGHT SOUND LIKE THIS FIRST ONE, i might warm to it more.

Yeah, some songs are growers. The first-time-through standouts that I hadn't heard previously were "Sirensong" and "The Scream." "Underneath the Stars" does pretty much set a high bar, though -- that's what they opened with at the Hollywood Bowl.

i'm over this album already. my attention span is freakishly small these days. i'm also trying to finish my own album right now and having a hard time dealing with anything else, so that might play a part of it; buy my initial excitement wore off very quickly, partly because I find the album so fatiguing to listen to.

I'm so sad. I picked up a physical copy of this today to go along with the iTunes version I bought last week.

I gotta say I'm with akm at this point. Despite my intital enthusiasm, I too find it fatiguing to listen to, and I find I can't even get through "It's Over" without wanting to turn it off already. There are a couple of pretty good tracks here, but the rest doesn't leave any real impression and I just get tired of the overall ANGST I get from it. It's like I just wish he'd chill out a bit with the mood. I don't know, maybe some of that is to do with the compression or the way his vocals are recorded, but even from a pure songwriting sense, I don't think there's much to latch onto here.

I think I said this elsewhere but I've basically listened to nothing but this album since I bought it.

I've been thinking a lot about their 1997+ output and I seriously believe they've released a string of flat-out brilliant songs that have had the misfortune of being spread out across multiple albums/b-sides. That list would include:

Jupiter Crash
Treasure
It Used To Be Me
Home
Out Of This World
The Loudest Sound
Lost
Labyrinth
Anniversary
Going Nowhere
Underneath The Stars
The Scream
It's Over
The Only One
All Kinds Of Stuff

I put together a two CD collection of B-sides/one-offs/etc. from 2000 to now that's essentially a continuation of Join the Dots -- I'll dig up the tracklisting here when I'm home...

um help, I srsly can't stop listening to this

I thought the Portishead album was going to beat this for me this year but apparently I'd forgotten exactly how much uncritical lizard-brain affection I have for The Cure

Actually, wouldn't that make a great tour, the two of them together.

+ Santogold

I need to get back to this album. As a lot of posters here it seems, I love the songs, especially RS's vocals on this (which for me had been the weak point of the last releases) bu the compression is really preventing me from playing it on repeat

Two weeks on, I must have played 'Hungry Ghost' 50 times already. For some reason that song really sticks out for me

That song's been coming to mind a lot too, especially the chorus. I don't suppose there'll be another single from this but it would be an interesting choice.

Not a big fan of this album a few spins later. I think the self-titled record may be better, actually.

I think this album is a lot better than The Cure, and I'm on of the few people around here who still likes that album.

btw "The Real Snow White" and "The Hungry Ghost" grew on me massively over the weekend