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Rating: What a good laugh I still have when I watch the "Let's Go to Bed" video, with Robert Smith and his silly and amused expression: "cheerfully kiss my behind, goths, and take this stupid and childlike pop/wave!" he seems to say, and who knows how many surprised faces in front of the screen...
The following year our guy returns to the recording studio equipped with dozens of beer crates and a solid supply of acid; Bob's in good spirits, he's realized you only live once... And so the world starts to get colorful. Never was a cover more fitting to define the content of an album, indeed. Robert Smith is here, more than in previous albums, without a doubt (first heresy: walls that peel away)! He transforms into the Syd Barrett of the 80s, elusive and amused, with his subtle irony, his somewhat childish manner, therefore genuinely visionary. Smith is one who messes with musical genres, kicks them around, tramples them, uses them like a soccer ball, with a smile. He subjugates genres; he never conforms to them. It's like this that in his (to me) finest moments, he becomes indefinable, out of space and time, suspended and radiant, brilliantly bright. The overwhelming sensation from this album is of brightness. So let go of the Hundred Years and the need to find a Cure; "I'll keep the illness to myself", Bob must've thought, "after all, maybe, they were just delusions..."
So then Bob, tell us, tell us about the "Birdmad Girl" with all her oriental charm, tell us about the Caterpillar and the Piggy in the Mirror. Delicate little pop frescoes of dreams and visions. Above all, the Piggy, "Piggy In The Mirror", guys, it's the "best Cure song" ever (another heresy! Walls that start to shake); the perfect pop song, completely out of its mind, only formally regular, very melodic. With that bass played in chords that weaves the verse, that arabesque solo halfway through, that voice so theatrical but never cloying... Wonder, pure wonder. Tell us more, Bob, the acid and clashing guitars of "Shake Dog Shake", or those even more violent ones in the scream of "Give Me It"... and if the goths still want "dark", then let them listen to that sepulchral and visionary nightmare, pure psychedelia, of The Top. Much more than that bore of Siamese Twins (another heresy! walls that tremble!) from that block of Pornography (and that's big!).
The top was obviously a underrated album, "Because it's not very homogeneous" many said. "What does Robert Smith care about homogeneity?" Can I humbly respond? This album is pure divergence, it is being out of the box, it is fleeing the cliché, in two words: it is art. In its purest state. It is not dark, it is not '80s, if anything more '60s, it is not rock and it is not pop, at least not as they are canonically understood, maybe it is all of this together; and maybe it is something that lives standalone, as only masterpieces can live. Ladies and gentlemen, THE BEST CURE ALBUM, and may the walls collapse too.Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Shake Dog Shake (04:55)
Ha ha ha!!!
Wake up in the dark
The aftertaste of anger in the back of my mouth
Spit it on the wall
And cough some more
And scrape my skin with razor blades
And make up in the new blood
And try to look so good
Follow me!
Make up in the new blood
And follow me to where the real fun is
Ha ha ha!!!
As stale and selfish as a sick dog
Spurning sex like an animal of god
I'll tear your red hair by the roots
And hold you blazing
Hold you cherished in the dead electric light
Your face
I'll never see you this way again
I captured it so perfectly
As if I knew you'd disappear away
Shake dog shake
You hit me again
You howl and hit me again
The same sharp pain
Wakes me in the dark
And cuts me from my throat to my pounding heart
My heart
My shaking heart
Shake dog shake
But we slept all night in the virgin's bed
And dreamed of death
And breathed like sick dogs
We slept all night in the virgin's bed
And breathed like death
And dreamed of sick dogs
Shake dog shake
Wake up wake up wake up!
Shake dog shake
Wake up wake up wake up!
Shake dog shake
Wake up in the new blood
Make up in the new blood
Shake up in the new blood
And follow me to where the real fun is...
Shake dog shake
03 Wailing Wall (05:17)
The holy city breathed
Like a dying man
It moved with hopeful tears
With the tears of the blind
And on and on as the night drew in
Through broken streets
That sucked me in
My feet were bare and cut with stones
With walking to the promised land
I pushed through crowds
Through seas of prayer
Through twisting hands and choking air
A vulture at the wailing wall
I circled...
Waiting...
04 Give Me It (03:42)
Get away from me
Get your fingers out of my face
This room's so hot
This room's so hot
I break the walls
Get away from me
Leave me alone
Like the pig on the stairs
Hanging
In a groovy purple shirt
Gasping for air
I'm gasping for air
I'm gasping for love
I'm gasping for air...
Slit the cats like cheese
Then eat the sweet sticky things
Suck harder!
Suck harder!
Suck your insides
Insides out!
Blood thick swimming round your feet
As you're choking
Choking
Choking on the fleshy words
Give me it give me it give me it
Deaden my glassy mind
Give me it give me it
Make me blind
One step back and one step down
And slip the needles in my side...
My head is cold
My hands are cold
My heart is cold
My heart is black
And stops every fucking night
Every night
I wait until it stops...
Sing birds sing birds sing birds sing
Get away...
05 Dressing Up (02:51)
Going under slowly
It never seems too late
Going under so slow...
Dressing up to kiss
Dressing up to touch all this
I'm dressing up to dance all week
I'm dressing up to sleep
Dressing up to kiss
Dressing up to be all this
I could eat your face
I could eat all of you
Oh this night will never let me go...
Going under slowly
Never seems too late
Going under slowly...
You'll pick me up again
06 The Caterpillar (03:40)
Flicka flicka flicka!
Here you are
Cata cata cata!
Caterpillar girl
Flowing in
And filling up my hopeless heart
Oh never never go
Dust my lemon lies
With powder pink and sweet
The day I stop
Is the day you change
And fly away from me
You flicker
And you're beautiful
You glow inside my head
You hold me hypnotized
I'm mesmerized...
Your flames
The flames that kiss me dead
07 Piggy in the Mirror (03:40)
Shapes in the drink like Christ
Cracks in the pale blue wall
I'm walking slowly and quickly but
Always away
Twisting twisting to the floor
Flowers in your mouth and the same dry song
The routine from laughter land
Sixteen white legs and a row of teeth
They watch you in secrecy
You're dying for the hope is gone
From here we go nowhere again
I'm trapped in my face and I'm changing
Too much
I can't climb out the way I fell in
Jump with me
For that old forgotten dance
The midnight sun will burn you up
Your life is cold
Your life is hard
Your life is too much for words
These occasions are such a relief
Another point another view to send
Hey hey hey!
We start to talk
And it's all so safe...
I feed you in my dreams
Footsteps on a wire
High above my head
The stain reveals my real intention
I'm the waiting beast
I'm the twisted nerve
As I dance
Dance back to the body in my bed
Look at the piggy
Piggy in the mirror
09 Bananafishbones (03:12)
Curl into a ball like you have more fun
That would make it faster
Why do you do it do you do it do you act like you?
Why do you do it do you act like you?
Don't fight
Go red and blue and black and white
Sell this sell this
Or leave it senseless like a suck on a gun?
"Put a piece of metal in your head" you said
"Make you dead
Make you hippa hippa hippa hippa... "
A palace of stones
Of your bananafish bones
I'd buy you a hundred years old
To celebrate our difference
Theorise and talk yourself
Until you're tired and old
Disappear everywhere and watch me
Pull my lips apart
Exploit! Inspire! Encourage!
Be responsible for this...
Ha ha!
I don't think
I don't think
I make use of all this time
Oh kill me kiss me once
And then we'll throw it away
And then we'll throw it away...
Turn off the lights
And tell me about the games you play...
10 The Top (06:50)
"I don't care"
If only I could say that
And not feel so sick and scared
"I don't care"
I only Icould say that
I only my eyes would close...
"It's jesus brilliant"
You used to laugh
"Walking these gorgeous blocks...
This top is the place
Where nobody goes
You just imagine
You just imagine it all..."
Every day I lie here
And know that it's true
All I really want is you
Please come back
Please come back
Like all the other ones do...
Please come back
All of you...
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Other reviews
By how the end always is
"The Top remains one of the most absurd yet also artistically great moments in Cure’s history!"
"The Top is the place where nobody goes... YOU JUST IMAGINE IT ALL...! This is ART!!!"
By Algeone
The Top... sounds somewhat like the synthesis of past and forthcoming projects.
There isn’t a single track that does not reveal a complex journey, a poetic metaphor, an almost esoteric symbolism in the intentions of Robert Smith and therefore his peers.
