easycure

I find there to be anything but a significant difference (in quality and substance) between the two pieces.. and the first one seems enormously more creative to me. Hi and thank you.

Don't worry, what for?! Everyone has their own preferences, of course; and I totally get that when it comes to reviewing a band that you truly love, you look at it with an in-depth perspective down to the millimeter (it happened to me with The Cure). See you soon!

"Human degradation"? From The Cure's biography, it is evident that Robert Smith was not particularly troubled... If you look at The Cure's discography, you'll notice one of the most dynamic careers ever seen in the history of rock... there isn't a single album that resembles another, and the abrupt changes are manifold: Robert Smith is an eclectic moody person, not a depressed one. After Pornography, he released Let's go to bed, a track that, considering subsequent developments, is far more significant than all of Pornography put together... that’s why Pornography is a somewhat pathetic album; the evolution of The Cure itself confirms this. I completely agree with you on the expressive urgency, which, however, must be evaluated historically, meaning in the context in which it is embedded, and in any case, there exists expressive urgency and expressive urgency: otherwise, one could make the same claim about Turn on the Bright Lights and, say, Rock Bottom, while the former is decent and the latter is monstrous (in the positive sense of the term), and whether considered relatively or absolutely, the judgment does not change. Possible sincerity does not make an album exceptional by itself. There is also a matter of choice; some make bolder choices and some do not, and the difference is palpable.

reciprocated love :-D ..I agree: certain derivatives revisiting the '60s are even more detestable.. this is definitely high-end in the revival, no one denies it. But it's still a revival we're talking about, in my opinion..

Well, I find it much more superficial, from my point of view, to claim that they have a "unique aesthetic" because that's exactly where the point lies, in the aesthetics: if it were just a matter of voice or sounds, I wouldn't care a fig, but it's expressively speaking that I find no minimum detachment, if not in terms of 30 years of additional influences that indeed change the surface but little else; anyway, I gave this album a three, as you can see above. For me, it has some nice tracks (Untitled still remains my favorite by Interpol) and in the end, it’s a decent update... but nothing more than an update, as is the case with most of the posers who have suddenly decided to revive stuff from the '78 - '84 period. These people have taken a poetics and decontextualized it without any reason other than having decided to do so... their music has no historical sense, no generational sense, and certainly lacks any aesthetic sense, since it doesn’t pretend to innovate or change anything. It’s a bit of a farce, and even pathetic (given that many of the dark ones from that period, including The Cure, were a bit pathetic already, I don't deny that at all)... frankly, it deserves a passing grade because, I admit, at least it's a well-made transposition (at least in the case of this album; the "cover band" discussion applies to me if we look at their entire body of work), the only reason to call it a masterpiece or a great album is that it is a perfectly inscribed album in a mediocre era just like itself. In the land of the blind, as they say...

"If in '78 he had met Ian Curtis on the street, he would have said, 'You sound like David Bowie and the Buzzcocks, you're a terrible imitator..' Ian Curtis has nothing to do with the Buzzcocks, and little with David Bowie.. and the entire production of Joy Division is light-years away from anything that might have inspired Joy Division.. while the production of Interpol is identical to Joy Division (and by identical I mean the exact same 'meaning', more than significant) just exhumed 30 years later. 'Talent and soul make the difference' if a band covers another band, there's certainly little talent, even less soul; maybe you confused talent with competence."

votes (the second and third albums are, of course, pure crap; as is fitting for 90% of bands that emerged post-2000):

"Pieces that feed on the dark energy of a pulsing bass, true master of rhythm, melodious guitars painting dull and poignant landscapes, an incessant and omniscient drum, and the lyrics of the cultured singer, whose enigmatic and hermetic introspections reflect a visionary soul." ..just remove Paul Banks and add five or six names (at random) who released an album between '78 and '84, and probably the description will fit perfectly: one of the most overrated bands of the most useless and overrated period in rock over the last 50 years.

what a nice story.. but then Alessio I can't return the favor :-)

It seems brilliant: for me, the unattainable remains The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, closely followed by a lesser novel like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"; with your description, you've rekindled my desire to read Dick, which I haven't done in a good four years.