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Rating: What is a genius?
It is someone who creates a work of art first and in the most impactful way compared to anyone else.
So Robert Smith is a genius.
Only a genius could create "Faith" at such a young age.
At 21, Robert Smith invents melodies and lyrics in a musical language that no one had managed to conceive before.
And he puts in a strength, a passion that leaves us amazed: a few songs that are unique, with awkward and sparse melodies that are the very concept of essentiality.
Just look at the cover, a grainy and misty photo of the picturesque Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire. Robert claims that from the beginning the album was conceived "to be optimistic, but later it became incredibly morbid. Throughout that time, we were dealing with personal issues and were forced to live with this album for a year, carrying it around with concerts, bearing the burden of this semi-religious work as if we were doing penance."
Recorded at Abbey Road, all the songs deserve a mention because there is the entire universe of this small great man, expressed with a sensitivity (gothic, of course), that few at 20 years old have the ability to express. Personally, I adore the claustrophobic post-punk of "Primary," but also the way of understanding the feeling of love in "The Drowning Man," the church-like sadness of "The Funeral Party," the homage to Ian Curtis in "The Holy Hour," or the slowness of "Faith."
Unlike today where many musicians pretend to be different and then live in villas with pools, Robert Smith at 21 "was" different and lived his diversity on his own skin.
This review did not have the presumption of stating any absolute truth but merely to emphasize that someone at 20 can become a genius (and Robert Smith is one of them)...
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Primary (03:34)
The innocence of sleeping children
Dressed in white
And slowly dreaming
Stops all time
I slow my steps and start to blur
So many years have filled my heart
I never thought I'd say those words
The further we go
And older we grow
The more we know
The less we show
The very first time I saw your face
I thought of a song
And quickly changed the tune
The very first time I touched your skin
I thought of a story
And rushed to reach the end
Too soon
Oh remember
Please
Don't change
And so the fall came
Thirteen years
A shiny ring
And how I could forget your name
The air no longer in my throat
Another perfect lie is choked
But it always feels the same
So they close together
Dressed in red and yellow
Innocent forever
Sleeping children in their blue soft rooms
Still dream...
03 Other Voices (04:27)
Whisper your name in an empty room
You brush past my skin
As soft as fur
Taking hold
I taste your scent
Distant noises
Other voices
Pounding in my broken head
Commit the sin
Commit yourself
And all the other voices said
Change your mind
You're always wrong
Come around at Christmas
I really have to see you
Smile at me slyly
Another festive compromise
But I live with desertion
And eight million people
Distant noises
Other voices
Pulsing in my swinging arms
Caress the sound
So many dead
And all the other voices said
Change your mind
You're always wrong
04 All Cats Are Grey (05:26)
I never thought that I would find myself
In bed amongst the stones
The columns are all men
Begging to crush me
No shapes sail on the dark deep lakes
And no flags wave me home
In the caves
All cats are grey
In the caves
The textures coat my skin
In the death cell
A single note
Rings on and on and on...
05 The Funeral Party (04:13)
Two pale figures
Ache in silence
Timeless
In the quiet ground
Side by side
In age and sadness
I watched
And acted wordlessly
As piece by piece
You performed your story
Moving through an unknown past
Dancing at the funeral party
Memories of childrens' dreams
Lie lifeless
Fading
Lifeless
Hand in hand with fear and shadows
Crying at the funeral party
I heard a song
And turned away
As piece by piece
You performed your story
Noiselessly across the floor
Dancing at the funeral party
06 Doubt (03:11)
Stop my flight to fight
And die
And take a stand to change my life
So savage with red desperation
I clench my hands
You draw your claws
A hidden rage consumes my heart
As fuelled by years of wasted time
I close my eyes
And tense myself
And screaming
Throw myself in fury over the edge
And into your blood
Tear at flesh
And rip at skin
And smash at doubt
I have to break you
Fury drives my vicious blows
I see you fall but still I strike you
Again and again
Your body falls
The movement is sharp and clear and pure
And gone
I stop and kneel beside you
Drained of everything but pain
Screaming throw myself in fury
Over the edge and into your blood
Kiss you once and see you writhe
Hold you close and hear you cry
Kiss your eyes and finish your life
Finish your life
Again and again
Your body falls
The movement is sharp and clear and pure
And gone
I stop and kneel beside you
Knowing I'll murder you again tonight
07 The Drowning Man (04:48)
She stands twelve feet above the flood
She stares
Alone
Across the water
The loneliness grows and slowly
Fills her frozen body
Sliding downwards
One by one her senses die
The memories fade
And leave her eyes
Still seeing worlds that never were
And one by one the bright birds leave her...
Starting at the violent sound
She tries to turn
But final
Noiseless
Slips and strikes her soft dark head
The water bows
Receives her
And drowns her at its ease...
I would have left the world all bleeding
Could I only help you love
The fleeting shapes
So many years ago
So young and beautiful and brave
Everything was true
It couldn't be a story...
I wish it was all true
I wish it couldn't be a story
The words all left me
Lifeless
Hoping
Breathing like the drowning man
Oh Fuchsia!
You leave me
Breathing like the drowning man
Breathing like the drowning man
08 Faith (06:40)
Catch me if I fall
I'm losing hold
I can't just carry on this way
And every time
I turn away
Lose another blind game
The idea of perfection holds me...
Suddenly I see you change
Everything at once
The same
But the mountain never moves...
Rape me like a child
Christened in blood
Painted like an unknown saint
There's nothing left but hope...
Your voice is dead
And old
And always empty
Trust in me through closing years
Perfect moments wait...
If only we could stay
Please
Say the right words
Or cry like the stone white clown
And stand
Lost forever in a happy crowd...
No-one lifts their hands
No-one lifts their eyes
Justified with empty words
The party just gets better and better...
I went away alone
With nothing left
But faith
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Other reviews
By m
If sadness had the gift of emitting sound vibrations, it would probably sound like mournful bells foreboding grief against a backdrop of languid guitars that drool.
Faith is a single sensation of wonderful anguish, imperceptibly stretched over time.
By Overkill
"It's difficult to explain the frightening emotionality of this song, both lyrically and musically."
"Faith, seen as the ultimate resource, but also as damnation...drives away the squalid but comfortable bed of oblivion, of defeat."
By Mariaelena
This album is dark, dramatic, funeral, and the synthesizers become instruments of tragic pulmonary claustrophobia.
‘Faith’ I personally consider the most sorrowful, overwhelming, and wonderful track I have ever heard in my life, a song of my darkest soul.
By Rocky Marciano
An album that makes its "weak points" its strengths.
The title track represents the entire spirit of the work: dark, slow, melancholic, and full of that musical "monotony" and stillness.
