How did the cure perfected the art of collapsing?

It can be argued that their flagship publication, The treatmentof the Disintegration sold more than three million copies and raised the group's status from cult icons to superstars filling the stadiums. Yet this historic album was born of a turbulent 12-month period in which band leader Robert Smith fought the depression and fired co-founder of The Cure, Lol Tolhurst, from the group.

Listen Disintegration now.

The first cracks began to appear after the release of the eclectic double disc game of 1987. Kiss me Kiss me Kiss me. Although artistic triumph that rewarded The Cure with a Display panel Breakthrough in the Top 40 and their first platinum certification, the ensuing world tour left an exhausted Smith, uncomfortable facing the side effects of international pop celebrity and desperate to withdraw from the glow medias.

"I would have been happy to do these songs myself"

His depression being aggravated by the fact that he would be 30 in April 1989, Smith and his fiancée, Mary Poole, settled in a new house in London, where Smith began to write himself a series of new songs. As he later told Jeff Cacer, biographer of The Cure, he had even imagined emergency plans to record a solo album if his bandmates refused the new gloomy material he had composed. "I would have been very happy to have created these songs myself," Smith said. "If the group had not thought it was right, it would have been good."

However, drummer Boris Williams' first home sessions proved that The Cure was eager to rely on their leader's new equipment. After presenting more than 30 new tracks, the group joins producer David M Allen (The human league, Sisters Of Mercy, Neneh Cherry) at Hook End Manor Studios, Oxfordshire, and restored Disintegration together throughout the winter of 1988-1989.

It is well documented that the Disintegration The sessions were sometimes heavy and resulted in the departure of keyboardist Lol Tolhurst of the group because of problems related to alcohol. However, they have also been intensively productive. When The Cure finally reappeared, they did it with a crucial album that many longtime fans still think best define their work.

Thematically and sonically, Disintegration was above all a return to the dark and gloomy aesthetic that The Cure had explored in his key titles of the early 80s, Seventeen seconds, Faith and Pornography. Robert Smith may not have suffered from the unleashing nihilism that led him to approach him, but the depression that struck him in 1988 led him to write songs such as "Prayers For Rain", "Plainsong And "Closedown": intense, melancholy anthems filled with icy synths, heavy guitar figures and heavy drums like Williams' sound.

"It's an open show of emotions"

However, while a dark mood settles widely on Disintegration, darkness is decisively lifted by a group of the most accessible tracks of The Cure, such as "Pictures Of You", "Lullaby" and "Lovesong". Built around a flexible groove and one of Simon Gallup's most insistent bbad lines, "Lovesong" remains in particular one of the most sublime moments of The Cure, and his lyrical tenderness ("Whatever my words, I will always love you ") marked a major turning point. milestone for Robert Smith.

Writing and singing directly for her fiancée, Mary, it was Smith's first truly unadorned love song and, as he later told Jeff Apter, "It's an emotional show and it's took me ten years to reach the point where song of love very simple. "

The universal appeal of "Lovesong" earned him second place in the United States and gave The Cure its biggest success in the United States. In the UK, Fiction Records has chosen the "Lullaby", also contagious, as DisintegrationFirst single, he was also ranked in the Top 5, despite the strange, half-whispered voices of Smith and the nightmarish nightmarish lyrics of the song, in which "the Spanish takes dinner tonight".

"We have never intended to become as big as that"

With 12 tracks scoring over an hour, Disintegration It was not for sensitive souls, but fans and critics agreed it was a tour de force. When it was published on May 2, 1989, the NME rightly, hailed it as "a breathtaking and incredibly complete album"; he climbed to 3rd place in the British standings and generated multi-platinum sales.

Although Smith later admitted that "we never intended to be that big," the Prayer tour revealed that The Cure was playing at the stadiums and playing a career-wide marathon series. baduring that when they had said goodbye to the 80's in one of the largest alt.rock acts of the planet.

Disintegration can be bought here.

Listen to the best of The Cure on Apple Music and Spotify.