1989. The playful jolts of Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me are a memory: in the eyes of Robert Smith, obviously rimmed in black, return the ancient anxieties, the old worries, the renewed paranoias enriched by the malaise of a newlywed thirty-something. After the pop facets appeared here and there, "Disintegration" gathers the leaden shards left on the ground seven years earlier by "Pornography" and assembles a new great (perhaps the greatest) chapter in the history of the Cure.
Chinese drops fall into the pond when suddenly a majestic and luminous explosion of deep yet sweet sounds envelops the landscape with its measured and solemn rhythm. "Plainsong" is there to say that the clownish Robert Smith has taken a vacation and has returned to venture into his mirrored labyrinths, immersed like never before in oceans of artfully created keyboards. The sad and gloomy yet sweet and anesthetized reflections serve as the solemn and bewildering opening to a newly homogeneous album.
"Pictures Of You" is a bit slimmer, characterized by the familiar echo-laden interplay between guitars and bass: the role of the double (here represented by the photographs leafed through, collected, and analyzed) often recurs in Smith's poetry, whether it is another person or a reflection of oneself. The slow but determined glide down a corridor of warm ice accentuates Robert's clear singing and the guitar work, never over the top but always meticulously crafted: a melancholic embrace perfectly packaged.
The fathomless beats, reassuring yet threatening at the same time, crafted by Williams and Gallup introduce "Closedown", another musical behemoth upon which O'Donnell constructs imposing electronic walls, more exciting than ever. The guitar reverberations bounce, slightly jostled in this room of mirrors at the bottom of the sea, carried by a current of synthesizers towards Smith’s distressed recounting of his oppressive sense of aging; the conscious sadness of not being able to fill up with emotions, the heavy burden of an age that has never truly belonged to him, a thick and dense wind of conflicting sensations: all in a magnificent painting of heavy smoothness.
The next track, "Lovesong", is the album's turning point: not so much in the sounds, which are slightly less oppressive, but in the themes. The song is indeed Robert Smith's wedding gift to his lifelong partner, Mary Poole; the piece is essentially an anthem to his wife, a refraction of the most sweetly melancholic part of the sad clown. Less swollen with sounds but at the same time sinisterly hollowed, "Lovesong" is indeed a love song, but painted in gothic and joyously dark characters.
Time once more stretches and gets lost in sound oceans and soft melancholic streams, the six-string voice multiplies in a thousand wandering bubbles in the dark, while the sung verses fit perfectly within the black frame: "Last Dance" is Cure at one hundred percent, full of sounds and meanings yet bearer of a constant and invincible sense of emptiness.
The most well-known track from the album, "Lullaby", is a strange horror lullaby typically British, lacking much logical sense yet penetrating. Dear Robert (immortalized in the song's video in improbable striped pajamas as he battles a giant spider) whispers the lullaby marked by a granitic and spasmodic rhythm: the terror of being consumed by the spider-man protagonist is the same as being the creature itself, in another mirror representation of a nighttime tale. The skittering and the rapid, shaky stride of the monster are perfectly depicted by O'Donnell’s strings, synthesized now schizophrenic and now spread out in a terrifying yet at the same time so catchy web.
"Fascination Street" is more overwhelming than ever, a race in the night led by Gallup’s spectacular bass that starts, ignites, and never stops. The guitar specters pass quickly by the window, distorted and empty as if soaked in acid, while the drops of electronics fall quickly upon, shaken off by Williams’ hammering and Smith’s voice: a perfect rock song.
The sounds try to grow in "Prayers For Rain", but are thrown into an endless whirlpool, a space without gravity where fiery tongues float commandingly, twisting, suffocating, and tightening their grip. The electronic steps approach ever closer, looming in this claustrophobic and menacing fresco. Water is seen as an element of salvation, even prayed for, in stark contrast with the vision of jailer and common prison of the subsequent "The Same Deep Water As You": a cell of problems and drowning feelings. Here Robert Smith tries to fight against the anesthetizing effect of the gently storming sea, an incredible work by O'Donnell in recreating the exact sensation of rain in the ocean. Every single note by Thompson is a bright stroke to escape the waves, the slow-motion shipwreck occurring in Smith’s heart, slow but inevitable, so much so that kisses once a means of vampiric games become a common epitaph, in the last underwater union before oblivion.
"Disintegration" is more energetic instead, loaded as usual with electronic walls, granitic rhythm, and luminous specters flickering in the black sky. Here Smith almost manages to express anger, not just melancholy and resignation, for the things gone, disintegrated in fact, that he will no longer experience and have. The piece is almost mocking in highlighting with cheerful punctuation some murky memories, while Smith's delicate and feeble scream grows as time goes by, surrounded by his own ghosts of a time.
"Homesick" is sad, stripped of unnecessary trimmings and folded in on itself in an icy cocoon of tears. The bouncing of the drums resembles that of a broken puppet, the guitars wander sobbing among electronic weavings, reluctantly avoiding Gallup’s threatening but exhausted bass and reaching the dusty piano set who knows how many years ago: the magnificence of regret is set aside, leaving only a faint crescendo of bitterness, straight to the heart like a simple but amazing jagged dart.
The concluding track of the album allows the music and words to say goodbye, without needing a title ("Untitled", indeed). The voice-guitar-keyboard blend conveys conscious resignation, translating into song that typical shy, sad yet vital smile Robert Smith has borne for a lifetime. The eyes are still moist as the guitars intertwine for one last slow and beautiful dance before disappearing onto the horizon and leaving the organ, distant, in the dark.
"Disintegration" takes the mirrored labyrinths of "Seventeen Seconds", the resigned sadness of "Faith", and the hellish darkness of "Pornography", immersing it all in O'Donnell's electronic wells and throwing away the playfulness of just two years before. The result is an album of compact and coherent sound, fascinating, sad and cold as the night, and as emotional as only the masterpiece of the Cure can be.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Plainsong (05:16)
I think it's dark and it looks like rain,
You said
And the wind is blowing like it's the end of the world,
You said
And it's so cold
It's like the cold if you were dead...
And then you smiled
For a second
I think I'm old and I'm feeling pain,
You said
And it's all running out like it's the end of the world,
You said
And it's so cold
It's like the cold if you were dead...
And then you smiled
For a second
Sometimes you make me feel
Like I'm living at the edge of the world
Like I'm living at the edge of the world
It's just the way I smile,
You said
02 Pictures of You (07:28)
I've been looking so long at these pictures of you
That I almost believe that they're real
I've been living so long with my pictures of you
That I almost believe that the pictures are
All I can feel
Remembering
You standing quiet in the rain
As I ran to your heart to be near
And we kissed as the sky fell in
Holding you close
How I always held close in your fear
Remembering
You running soft through the night
You were bigger and brighter and whiter than snow
And screamed at the make-believe
Screamed at the sky
And you finally found all your courage
To let it all go
Remembering
You fallen into my arms
Crying for the death of your heart
You were stone white
So delicate
Lost in the cold
You were always so lost in the dark
Remembering
You how you used to be
Slow drowned
You were angels
So much more than everything
Hold for the last time then slip away quietly
Open my eyes
But I never see anything
If only I'd thought of the right words
I could have held on to your heart
If only I'd thought of the right words
I wouldn't be breaking apart
All my pictures of you
Looking so long at these pictures of you
But I never hold on to your heart
Looking so long for the words to be true
But always just breaking apart
My pictures of you
There was nothing in the world
That I ever wanted more
Than to feel you deep in my heart
There was nothing in the world
That I ever wanted more
Than to never feel the breaking apart
All my pictures of you
03 Closedown (04:21)
I'm running out of time
I'm out of step and
Closing down and
Never sleep for wanting hours
The empty hours of greed
And uselessly
Always the need
To feel again the real belief
Of something more than mockery
If only I could fill
My heart with love
04 Lovesong (03:31)
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am young again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun again
However far away
I will always love you
However long I stay
I will always love you
Whatever words I say
I will always love you
I will always love you
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am free again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am clean again
However far away
I will always love you
However long I stay
I will always love you
Whatever words I say
I will always love you
I will always love you
05 Lullaby (04:12)
(I spy something beginning with S...)
On candystripe legs the spiderman comes
Softly through the shadow of the evening sun
Stealing past the windows of the blissfully dead
Looking for the victim shivering in bed
Searching out fear in the gathering gloom and
Suddenly!
A movement in the corner of the room!
And there is nothing I can do
And I realize with fright
That the spiderman is having me for dinner tonight!
Quietly he laughs and shaking his head
Creeps closer now
Closer to the foot of the bed
And softer than shadow and quicker than flies
His arms are around me and his tongue in my eyes
Be still, be calm, be quiet now, my precious boy
Don't struggle like that or I will only love you more
But it's much too late to get away or turn on the light
The spiderman is having you for dinner tonight!
And I feel like I'm being eaten
By a thousand million shivering furry holes
And I know that in the morning I will wake up
In the shivering cold
The spiderman is always hungry...
(Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly
I have something...)
06 Fascination Street (05:17)
Oh it's opening time
Down on Fascination Street
So let's cut the conversation
And get out for a bit
Because I feel it all fading and paling
And I'm begging
To drag you down with me
To kick the last nail in
Yeah! I like you in that
Like I like you to scream
But if you open your mouth
Then I can't be responsible
For quite what goes in
Or to care what comes out
So just pull on your hair
Just pull on your pout
And let's move to the beat
Like we know that it's over
If you slip going under
Slip over my shoulder
So just pull on your face
Just pull on your feet
And let's hit opening time
Down on Fascination Street
So pull on your hair
Pull on your pout
Cut the conversation
Just open your mouth
Pull on your face
Pull on your feet
And let's hit opening time
Down on Fascination Street
07 Prayers for Rain (06:07)
You shatter me
Your grip on me
A hold on me
So dull it kills
You stifle me
Infectious sense
Of hopelessness and
Prayers for rain
I suffocate
I breathe in dirt
And nowhere shines
But desolate
And drab the hours all spent
On killing time again
All waiting for
The rain
You fracture me
Your hands on me
A touch so plain
So stale it kills
You strangle me
Entangle me
In hopelessness and
Prayers for rain
I deteriorate
I live in dirt
And nowhere glows
But drearily and tired
The hours all spent
On killing time again
All waiting for
The rain
09 Disintegration (08:24)
Oh I miss the kiss of treachery
The shameless kiss of vanity
The soft and the black and the velvety
Up tight against the side of me
And mouth and eyes and heart all bleed
And run in thickening streams of greed
As bit by bit it starts the need
To just let go
My party piece
Oh I miss the kiss of treachery
The aching kiss before I feed
The stench of a love for a younger meat
And the sound that it makes
When it cuts in deep
The holding up on bended knees
The addiction of duplicities
As bit by bit it starts the need
To just let go
My party piece
But I never said I would stay to the end
So I leave you with babies and hoping for frequency
Screaming like this in the hope of the secrecy
Screaming me over and over and over
I leave you with photographs
Pictures of trickery
Stains on the carpet and
Stains on the scenery
Songs about happiness murmured in dreams
When we both us knew
How the ending would be...
So it's all come back round to breaking apart again
Breaking apart like I'm made up of glass again
Making it up behind my back again
Holding my breath for the fear of sleep again
Holding it up behind my head again
Cut in deep to the heart of the bone again
Round and round and round
And it's coming apart again
Over and over and over
Now that I know that I'm breaking to pieces
I'll pull out my heart
And I'll feed it to anyone
Crying for sympathy
Crocodiles cry for the love of the crowd
And the three cheers from everyone
Dropping through sky
Through the glass of the roof
Through the roof of your mouth
Through the mouth of your eye
Through the eye of the needle
It's easier for me to get closer to heaven
Than ever feel whole again
I never said I would stay to the end
I knew I would leave you with babies and everything
Screaming like this in the hole of sincerity
Screaming me over and over and over
I leave you with photographs
Pictures of trickery
Stains on the carpet and
Stains on the memory
Songs about happiness murmured in dreams
When we both of us knew
How the end always is
How the end always is...
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Other reviews
By dying_sun
To this day (along with Faith and Pornography) the best dark album ever released in the history of music.
Robert Smith’s creativity reaches its peak here, and it was the last masterpiece by The Cure.
By mic
Disintegration guys IS NOT JUST AN ALBUM BUT THE SOUNDTRACK OF AN ERA AND AN ENTIRE GENERATION.
Songs like 'Homesick'... make you vibrate and vibrate with every note.
By Sam
He tries to imagine the scene as a drawn cartoon, he has no trouble canceling the colors.
In the distance, amid the murmur of the other customers in the place, Robert Smith sings 'It’s just the way I smile, you said...'
By killrockstar76
Robert Smith, behind the lipstick and mascara... hides a heart as big as this.
"Disintegration" delivers to pop history one of the most poignant and intense albums of the last twenty years.
By Mariaelena
Disintegration is like therapeutic psychological power, the more you listen to it, the more it draws out the worst or, in some way, the best in us.
Robert Smith, what he creates inside my soul is of such greatness that I cannot compare him to any artist under the aspect of painful infusion of the soul.