1001 Albums Summary

Not quite on the level of the two albums that followed it, but still fantastic. The two big hits are extraordinary, and there are some good deeper cuts as well, but I don't know, overall it just doesn't stand out in the way that Call Me or my personal favorite I'm Still In Love With You does.

Even aside from the hype, I just never really cared much for this album. The grooves -- on top of many of them being suspiciously reminiscent of other songs from the few years prior to the making of this album -- are so overproduced and quantized that they feel completely sterile. No one's going to deny how catchy some of these songs are, but they're catchy in such a calculated way that it removes any semblance of an organic feel and comes across more like music that was scientifically engineered to get stuck in your head (which, in a way, it was).

As a goth teenager this wasn't one of my favorite Cure albums...because it was less goth than most of their earlier stuff, obviously. Nowadays, I wouldn't hesitate to call it my absolute favorite. The perfect "listen to on your headphones while lying in bed with the lights turned off at night" album.