News: The Cure – Disintegration Remastered Vinyl

Not all of Robert Smith’s music has grown up. Over a single career The Cure have written more great songs than five lesser bands, but given the sheer size of their catalogue, it’s unsurprising some ideas have aged better than others – Pornography, for example, remains suspended in adolescence, and Wild Mood Swings never got that far.

But, now aged 21, Disintegration remains Smith’s strangest, most dense experiment in unconventional song structure and layered sound, and deserves to be treated as an adult.

Latent interest in post-punk rekindled an interest in the Cure’s spikier records like Faith and Seventeen Seconds, allowing the band to enter its twilight years with some dignity (after spending the 1990s doing all they could to beat up dignity and leave it in an alley).

Recorded during a period of intense disillusion with his band, disgust at the idea of turning 30, and heavy acid consumption, Disintegration was intended to change things up. However, The Cure’s most ambitious record is also it’s most commercially successful. ‘Lovesong’, conceived as a wedding present for his fiancée, remains the band’s biggest hit in the US.

Even casual Cure fans will be familiar with Disintegration: ‘Plainsong’ appeared prominently in a Sophia Coppola film and ‘Pictures of You’ is likely to be lodged in your internal jukebox. Its vast waves of reverb, its extended instrumental passages and deeply felt lyrics are still being robbed by bands of kids today.

Despite its familiarity, this recent remastered release, pressed on audiophile-quality 180g vinyl and spread over four sides, justifies a re-evaluation of Disintegration.
On the original pressing, synths on tracks like ‘Prayers For Rain’ are further out, a little thin, giving way to chiming guitar and Smith’s wavering vocal. The remaster is many orders of magnitudes bigger, transforming what was spectral in the organs into a dirge-like blast. Smith’s vocals appear sharply through the reverb, as does the real shape of the guitar. Even more astounding are once-hidden details – a spattering of piano, notes played in reverse.

Some have criticised the scrubbed-up version for bringing the elements of a formerly spacious mix into the foreground, and for making Disintegration generally louder. I disagree.
The remaster accentuates distinct elements in the flood of shoegaze reverb while lending real power to deeper veins of noise. Smith’s voice, too, becomes more legible without dominating the arrangements.

For hardcore fans, a three-disc deluxe CD version was unveiled simultaneously with 20 unreleased tracks and a full live performance, but for even a listener only vaguely interested in the Cure, this remastered edition of Disintegration is an album that qualifies as a must-have. TIM GREY

Sound: 5
Music: 5