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Rating: The story begins at 10:15 on a Saturday night like many others, with a drop falling and three imaginary boys, antiheroes of existential emptiness and the industrial suburbs of late seventies England. It is above all the story of Robert and his whimsical poetics, his dreams and the parallel worlds he loves to narrate. A sensibility that follows neither schemes nor rules, incapable of living in its own time, and in a desperate search for an escape from rampant conformity. For Robert, the world is indeed a perpetual source of deceptions and disillusionments, coalescing until they weigh heavy like stones.
Daniela Cascella, journalist and skilled musicologist, seeks to delve into the enigmatic universe of The Cure and offer a free interpretation of the streams of consciousness of one of the leading guiding spirits of British dark-wave. The author analyzes with meticulous precision those verses modeled on the malady of living and the sense of anguish, yet permeated by an unparalleled romantic and decadent taste. A study with a delightful personal touch that traverses the entire life journey of Smith and his cohorts, from the darkness of the beginnings to the multiple identity crises of the eighties, up to the period of maturity and acceptance of the sweet estrangement from the world.
Cascella's book focuses on the recurring themes of duality, the obsession with darkness and emptiness, but also explains the witty nonsense and the capacity for ironic detachment. Particularly interesting is the search for literary sources and resonances found in the various lyrics. Not only the more obvious and well-known ones, like Camus's “The Stranger” in the lyrics of “Killing An Arab” or the Kafkaesque references in “At Night”, but also the more veiled ones of the various Eliot, Milton, Carroll, etc. scattered throughout the band's discography. Influences that provide a partial key to understanding the works of an unconventional artist and highlight even more their great versatility. Because Robert Smith is not just the depressed and paranoid rock star trapped in his shadow, but also that funny clown in love with a meat hook. The symbol of an uncertain and confused generation seeking change and a new form of expression. Certainly, time has soothed that malaise, dampened the tensions, probably made us less sensitive than we were then and more inclined to self-pity. And now that everything rushes by as if it were the end of the world, what remains is the depth of those sounds. And those words. "It doesn’t matter if we all die”.
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