sábado, 16 de junho de 2012

'Faith' by The Cure: a review

This review was written a month ago, I just didn't have any time lately to publish it, so, here you go.
Cover of the record 'Faith'

 21st of May, 2012:
"Faith" by The Cure is the next target of a review, and I wrote this because, well, I identify myself with it a lot. It's got such a melancholic, sad, grey touch to it.  The whole lyrics in general talk about death, religion specially catholic religion.
«The bass adds a real gloomy and intense touch to it; monotonous chords, so similar to a person's last breath, to a dying man's breath. Hypnotising, magical, though. There's something captivating in Simon Gallup's bass, and in this period of their music (1981) the bass stands out and marks its own presence among the bittersweet symphony.
As 'The Holy Hour' plays in my headphones, I recall that Robert Smith dedicated it to Ian Curtis (whom had died in the past year 1980), and I connect the bass chords and its sound to death very very easily.
 It's a whole religious, cathedral-like atmosphere, because they wanted to play with it, since Robert Smith is against any type of religion, but he did feel attracted to churches, graveyards, cathedrals. Even the synthesizers in this album remind you of the church's organ.
So I view this album as a gothic/sarcastic and sad critic on religion. But of course, we're talking about 'The Holy Hour', 'The Funeral Party' and 'Faith'. The rest are quite different and similar, at the same time to these three. They differ in the subject of the lyrics, but the melody is really attached to one another, the melody of the whole album holds hands.
 But this album is all about one main thing: Death/Peace.
 Still, it's quite hard to explain what I feel when I listen to it. There are feelings I can't describe and I don't know what to name them.
And then, 'Charlotte Sometimes' starts to play. I feel as if I were Charlotte herself. She's a lost, abandoned lonesome young girl who tries her best to hold on the society's flow.
 And I'm Charlotte, a 'scared princess' who dreams and loses track of what's real, she gets lost in another world, possibly her own. It's really strange that I identify with her.
 After this brief description of my identification to Charlotte, I still feel as if I am really far away to describe it accurately.

 "Night after night she lay alone in bed
Her eyes so open to the dark
The streets all looked so strange
They seemed so far away
But Charlotte did not cry " - But then she eventually cries, in the end of the song. "The tears were pouring down her face". Charlotte tried to be strong and to handle it, but she's not able to.
"She was crying and crying for a girl
who died so many years before..." That girl is herself, she's already dead, a lost soul. She is dead, but she is not aware of such thing. She is lost in her world, in a world she created herself. And it's likely that she doesn't want to be found.
"Charlotte sometimes,  crying for herself/ Charlotte sometimes dreams a wall around herself" - that wall is her dream world, her own surreal mind.  She doesn't belong to this world.

Cover of Charlotte Sometimes's single

Primary is the next one. A song that clearly talks about life, ageing, dying, The whole cycle of life. Childhood, youth, old age, death. There isn't much to talk about it, though.
Robert mentions children dreaming in the beginning and mentions them again, in the end, because when you get old you go back to being a fragile, dependant being as a child is.
"Oh remember/ Please don't change".´






Other Voices is a sensual song. Both lyrics and sound, instrumental have an erotic touch to it.
 The only thing in this song that is out of context is ""And all the other voices said/ Change your mind you're always wrong", when the whole song talks about an affair, about the sensuality of the sin, the slyness,  skin, scent. "I taste your scent." You can only taste another's scent if you're close enough, when you're making love to that person.
 Still, that verse might refer to Robert's voices, conscience telling him his lover doesn't love him/ is not that interested in him as he is when says "Come around in Christmas, I really have to see you." But then, this is only my interpretation.



All Cats Are Grey is the next one in line, definitely one of my favourite songs by them.
The drums make the rhythm as its sound gives the impression of near echoes of someone falling into a river violently every three seconds. The synth (again, very similar to a church's organ) evoke the calm wind, but it also gives me the sensation of being in the middle of a northern meadow covered in snow, whilst the snow is still falling.
Someone plays the synth and I feel as if the wind was teasing me, dancing with my hair, snowflakes melt down on me. I am alone in this meadow, white and grey landscape. But the sound gives me the sensations of an unknown safety, serenity. Yes, because this feeling of safety is strange in such occasion when you're "amongst the stones", " columns are all men, begging to crush me."
 When I think of these quotes, I feel as if it refers to humanity, who're all a bunch of stone, and they all want to crush you. Their hearts are made of stone and they all want to strike and kill you, almost as if in a jungle you whether join them, do or die.
 But then, the next line of context, since the previous ones talk about survival, about fighting against everyone else to survive, and the following ones talk about freedom, the sensations of being released of all this complexity and constant battle that the human society is.
"No shapes sail on the dark deep lakes, and no flags wave me home." In my perspective, it means being left alone, no negative feeling or event sailing in the lake of our lives, and no flags, nothing to tell you what to do. You are free, in the snow landscape, and you finally see not boat in your deep dark lake.
The song is over and it is followed by a much less calm sound, a song that talks about the ending of our lives, marked by a ceremony.
 You can easily be transported to a funeral scene, and in my opinion, it would in a Cornwall, in a cloudy, grey, cold and gloomy atmosphere, as the waves lick the brownish sand and the rocks bellow the water. You close your eyes and listen to 'The Funeral Party', instead of the waves, which would perfectly match the environment of those ceremonies, since it has a very melancholic and slow melody, as if a dying and sick man were walking, so it is very close and connected to death itself.
 I almost imagine the two pale figures, aching and moaning, but dancing to the music.

Doubt is a much more violent song, where fight, savage, red desperation, rage, wasted time, fury blood, tearing and ripping flesh and skin, smashing, breaking, vicious, finishing lives, murder, and drained of everything but pain are the main keys to this song.
The lyrics are wonderfully written and thought, but the lyrics seem (are) much more raw and naked and savage than the melody. I think of cannibalism, necrophilia, murders, serial killers, violence, twisted and sick behaviours and minds. I think of  Jeffrey Dahmer devouring his victims,  ripping their flesh and skin and the blood running out as a flood, satisfied with it. I think of Ted Bundy raping his victims before and after murdering them, taking pleasure out of something that would terrify and disgust a common person, but not them. They love it and they know they'll murder you tonight. »




Back of 'Faith' record


1 comentário:

  1. I really loved the text and the manner that you feel and describe the music.

    The Drowning Man is my favourite song from Faith Album and I consider one of the best songs by The Cure.

    Well, sorry for my poor english. Much time without practice.

    Cheers!

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