Why is there no thread for The Cure's Disintegration?

Guys (who already have this reissue), how's the remastering job? Nabisco points out in his Pfork review that things are a little... squished together.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14288-disintegration-deluxe-edition

Nabisco: Wembley Arena is not Wembley Stadium, btw

Oh crap! Sorry, total north-American ignorance on my part -- I'll let them know to correct the wording.

(still one of the biggest venues in western Europe, right?)

Yeah, stadium > arena (of which Wembley is one of the biggest, I think) > hall, I'd say.

wembley stadium = 90,000; arena a piddling 12,500 by comparison, and pretty average for arena size i reckon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indoor_arenas#Europe

Actually, it's not that big. Max. capacity 12,500 - Earl's Court can hold 19,000 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indoor_arenas_in_the_United_Kingdom ) - don't know if any of these are ever used as music venues but the 146th in this list is still 15,000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indoor_arenas_by_capacity

xpost: that's what I was looking for! thx :-)

I wouldn't say Wembley was one of the biggest arenas in Europe. There are quite a few bigger ones, e.g. the O2 and MEN in the UK, Bercy in Paris, Stadthalle in Vienna, SAP in Mannheim, etc.

xp

I like the review! (suddenly feeling guilty for ruining nabisco's day with irrelevant numbers) :-/

I was at one of those Wembley shows. Support was Shelleyann Orphan if anyone remembers them.

Shelleyan even.

I do indeed. Still got their album Helleborine around somewhere.

pretty mind-boggling that a fey group like that played Wembley, I can't imagine how they must have gone down

With rather more of a whimper than a bang iirc. Not really a band that could compete with the roar of 12,500 goths chatting.

Reposting below the Wembley talk...

Guys (who already have this reissue), how's the remastering job? Nabisco points out in his Pfork review that things are a little... squished together.

wiki has this to say:

The album's complex arrangements, lyrics rooted in romantic poetry, and liberal use of bassoon and oboe/cor anglais (unusual in any pop album), led to the labelling of the band as "pretentious" by the British music press.

loving those scare quotes

her vocals on the last This Mortal Coil record were wonderful though.

xp

well the Cranes playing the Rose Bowl was pretty surreal as well...

Should hopefully get changed to say it's one of the biggest (music) venues in the UK

I generally try not to make a big deal out of remaster/loudness issues -- everyone who cares already knows how it works -- but I think it's relevant with this one, because the it's part of how the album works, in terms of being comfortable and immersive and easy to sink into. I mean, it's not an issue that's gonna mess up an album like this, but it's always too bad to think a remaster might be diminishing the sound a little.

I don't like to make a big deal out of remastering jobs, either, but I see your point re: this album in particular. Is it noticeably worse, though? Or can I blast this remaster to the high heavens with the windows down on the freeway and not tell it's been squashed to some extent in the remastering process? I agree it's meant to be played loud, and fully intend to do so.

I think it sounds good - dynamic range is fine. I looked at the wave images in Audacity -- "Love Song" had pretty much no clipping. The end of "Fascination Street" has a little bit, but not so much that one could easily tell the difference audibly. I was a fan of their early albums, and could take or leave their spottier mid-80s albums The Top, Head On The Door and Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. However I find that many of those songs have really embedded themselves into my consciousness. I can't say the same for Disintegration, which came out my sophomore in college when my brainspace was more occupied with Sonic Youth, Pixies, Dinosaur Jr. and the like. It sounds pretty good though, and feels to me like their most consistent since Pornography.

Well, it's not just about clipping, it's about the changes that have to be made to avoid clipping! Honestly, it's not a bad job at all; there is nothing weird or egregious about it; I think this just turns out to be one record where modern remastering changes the way it works/feels a little more than with most.

Yeah, it only sounds distracting - and minimally at that - if you focus too much on the remastering. But 99% of folks will think this sounds great - on headphones, in the car, at home on the stereo. I say no harm, no foul.

One thing I've noticed while listening to Disintegration again is how reverb heavy it is. I mean there's some kind of reverb on every element in just about every song. This is something my teenaged brain and subsequent listens didn't really pick up on but Smith was def. going for an immersive experience with all these fx. Compare with the relatively dry recordings on most of "Kiss Me..." (my 2nd fave Cure album).

reverb was the first thing I noticed about the album as soon as "plainsong" kicked in

I like how this album gets a 10.0 and Pornography's reissue got 8.4

you guys, damn

"Immersive" is a good word for it. I've always listened to it as very watery, too, as in "oceanic."

I've never noticed the reverb so much as the rampant flanging.

I like how this album gets a 10.0 and Pornography's reissue got 8.4

Pfork OTM.

Also ksh OTM, more proof that Pfork only pulls out the 10.0 for reissues now.

Albums Rated 10.0

Initial release:

* ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – Source Tags & Codes
* 12 Rods - Gay? (EP)
* Bonnie 'Prince' Billy – I See a Darkness
* Bob Dylan – The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert
* The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin
* Robert Pollard – Relaxation of the Asshole (In the review, this album theoretically received both a 10.0 and 0.0 rating)
* Radiohead – Kid A
* Radiohead – OK Computer
* Amon Tobin – Bricolage
* Walt Mink – El Producto
* Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Re-release and compilations:

* Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
* The Beatles - Abbey Road
* The Beatles - The Beatles
* The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour
* The Beatles - Revolver
* The Beatles - Rubber Soul
* The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
* Boards of Canada – Music has the Right to Children
* Glenn Branca – The Ascension
* James Brown – Live at the Apollo
* The Clash – The Essential Clash
* The Clash – London Calling
* John Coltrane – The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording
* Elvis Costello – This Year's Model
* The Cure - Disintegration
* Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
* Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain
* DJ Shadow – Endtroducing
* The Fall – This Nation's Saving Grace
* Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire de Melody Nelson
* Galaxie 500 - On Fire
* Joy Division – Closer
* Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures
* Kiss – Alive!
* Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
* Pavement – Slanted and Enchanted
* Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
* Pavement - Quarantine the Past: The Best of Pavement
* Pink Floyd – Animals
* R.E.M. - Murmur
* R.E.M. - Reckoning
* Radiohead - The Bends
* Otis Redding - Otis Blue
* The Replacements - Let It Be
* The Rolling Stones - Exile On Main St.
* Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation
* Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
* Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run
* The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses
* The Stooges – Raw Power
* Television – Marquee Moon
* The Velvet Underground – Loaded
* The Who – Odds and Sods
* Wire – Pink Flag
* Wire – Chairs Missing
* XTC – English Settlement
* Various Artists – No Thanks!: The 70s Punk Rebellion

i was born in 1979 and couldn't possibly avoid "Friday's I'm In Love" and would have no idea how, crate-digging 10-year-old miccio and crut would have somehow discovered their "canonical early work" first

Best Album Rated 10.0 by Pitchfork Media Upon Its Initial Release (sorry...!)

i was born in 1979 and couldn't possibly avoid "Friday's I'm In Love" and would have no idea how, crate-digging 10-year-old miccio and crut would have somehow discovered their "canonical early work" first

I was 4 in 1992 and I only fucked w/garth brooks & randy travis. The first Cure song I heard was probably "Just Like Heaven" played on the local top 40 station's eighties night when I was like 10, tho that was years before I knew who the Cure were. I wasn't quite the crate-digger yet.

Kids today and their crate-digging. Heard the Clash yet?

What would be the point?

i was born in 1979 and couldn't possibly avoid "Friday's I'm In Love" and would have no idea how, crate-digging 10-year-old miccio and crut would have somehow discovered their "canonical early work" first

"love song" was a #2 hit when we were nine or ten, dude. also saw the video for "just like heaven," lived in a college town and had a babysitter who owned Mixed Up before Wish came out. sorry this freaks you out!

saw "fascination street" when i was a kid on MTV, too. it's not like the cure weren't already an MTV presence before Wish.

also it's not like i denied people my age may have heard "friday" first (srsly chris, read before you challop), just with the silly idea that your favorite cure album would be whatever you heard first, or that all kids born since 1977 would be into "friday" more than Pornography, or disintegration or standing on a beach stuff, just because it happened after. are kids born since 1987 more into the ross robinson album?

pretty sure the whole reason Wish could do well as an album in the U.S. was that the Cure had already become a major well-known "cult" act -- a hit and a half off Disintegration (anyone with a top-40 station could have heard "Lovesong"), a huge tour, word of mouth, the remix record, people had seen other people do their hair like them, etc. -- so all they needed was a pleasant pop song like "Fridays I'm in Love" to roll through wide-open media

and by "cult" I mean mainstream-level "cult" -- in terms of something like MTV, they were a big cult act by "Just Like Heaven." (I think they played it at an MTV awards thing at the time, actually.)

The "DisintegratIon" tour was one of those instances where the morning after, everyone in my high school was wearing a t-shirt.

(I should stress a Cure tour t-shirt; regular t-shirts - some with band names - were otherwise pretty common on a daily basis)

people had seen other people do their hair like them

loooooooool

That kind of thing is always really hard for me to imagine. But yeah, I grew up in a place that wasn't exactly up on trends -- a town in southern Colorado -- and got interested in rock/indie music around 1990: as I remember it, the two absolute easiest "college rock" groups to access at that point were the Cure and R.E.M. And I think the Cure were ahead by a long shot until "Losing My Religion." And a lot of this was less about MTV or radio play and more about just general teenage cult-icon status: t-shirts, haircuts, tape-borrowing ... they were just around and visible.

xpost - haha ilxor this is exactly what I mean -- when you're young or in school, that's a big thing!

I loved REM since Green (first CD I ever bought with my own money), but had no idea how many people were in the group until I bought the thing (first I thought they were an up-with-people/hooray-for-everything multiracial combo thanks to the "Stand" video) and didn't know which one was the singer until "losing my religion." Robert Smith on the other hand was a pretty obvious icon.

I knew REM long before I knew the Cure but that's because my mom knew who REM were

xpost - The other brief setback for REM was probably that their first hit came off pretty jokey/novelty.

Now I'm stuck thinking about how everyone else fared in that end-of-the-80s college-act pack ... next back was probably Depeche Mode, right? Who had the singles, but not as much beloved-icon stuff as the Cure or favorite-band stuff as REM. (Haha and Morrissey did great on the "cult" part but had no chance yet of a US hit.) There was a commercial-peak/iconic-album moment for this kind of thing, I guess, and then obviously a couple years later everything tipped hard into American alt/indie.

when i was in 7th-8th gr (87-89 approx) my favorite bands were REM, INXS, XTC, U2, The Cure, Violent Femmes, and Depeche Mode. There were literally LEGIONS of girls like me. i felt special, though, because everyone else was listening to hair metal where i lived. i also first heard "just like heaven" on the radio and it changed my life.

don't forget the b-52's and new order! dunno if fine young cannibals count.

as for rem's jokey/novelty deal, rem's first top ten pop hit was "the one i love," not "stand."

By the time Disintegration came out, I was under the impression that The Cure was a huge band -- almost everyone I knew loved them: Catholic schoolgirls, skater dudes, dorks like me, everyone. Tons of people were wearing the tshirt the day after the tour came through Cleveland in 9th gr. By the time Wish came out, it sounded kinda corny.

9th grade was when I branched out a lot. But 7th-8th grade was all about those bands.

first REM I heard was "it's the end of the world as we know it," lol