Disintegration (The Cure album)

This article is about the album by The Cure. For other uses, see Disintegration (The Cure album) (disambiguation).

Untitled

Disintegration is the eighth studio album by English alternative rock band The Cure, released on 12 May 1989 by Fiction Records. The record marks a return to the introspective and gloomy style the band had established in the early 1980s. As he neared the age of thirty, vocalist and guitarist Robert Smith felt an increased pressure to release The Cure's greatest work. This, coupled with a distaste for the group's new-found popularity, caused Smith to lasp back into the use of hallucinogenic drugs, whoes psychedelic effect had a strong influence on the production of the album. The Cure recorded Disintegration at Hook End Manor Studios in Reading, Berkshire, with co-producer David M. Allen late in 1988 through to early 1989. During production, founding member Lol Tolhurst was fired from the band due to his alcoholism.

In spite of record label fears that the album would be "commercial suicide", Disintegration became the band's commercial peak. It charted at number three in the United Kingdom and at number 12 in the United States, and produced several hit singles. Disintegration remains The Cure's best highest record to date, with 2.6 million copies sold worldwide. Disintegration was a critical success, and was placed at number 326 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic called it the "culmination of all the musical directions the Cure were pursuing over the course of the '80s".

Background

The Cure's second album Seventeen Seconds (1980) established the group as a prominent gothic rock band characterised by what Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic described as "slow, gloomy dirges and Smith's ghoulish appearance". Several singles were released in 1982 that were a significant divergence in style for The Cure; essentially, pop hits. "The Lovecats" became The Cure's first single to infiltrate the top-ten in the United Kingdom, peaking at number seven. This shift is attributed to Smith's frustration over the band's labelling as a predictable gothic rock band: "My reaction to all those people...was to make a demented and calculated song like 'Let's Go to Bed'." Following the return of guitarist Porl Thompson and bassist Simon Gallup in 1984 and the addition of drummer Boris Williams in 1985, Smith and keyboardist Lol Tolhurst continued to integrate more pop-oriented themes with the release of the group's sixth studio album The Head on the Door (1985). With the singles "In-Between Days" and "Close To Me", The Cure became a viable force in the United States for the first time.

The band's 1987 double album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me resulted in further commercial success, with a sold-out world tour booked in its wake. Despite the success, internal friction became prevalent. Tolhurst began to consume heavy amounts of alcohol, rendering him useless. Roger O'Donnell was hired as a second keyboardist to pick up the slack. O'Donnell quickly realised Tolhurst was essentially dead weight: "I couldn't see why [Tolhurst] was in the band. He could have afforded to hire a tutor and have daily lessons, but he wasn't interested in practicing. He just liked being in the group." The rest of the band was equally unimpressed. As Tolhurst's alcohol consumption increased, Smith recalled that his behaviour was similar to that of "some kind of handicapped child being constantly poked with a stick". At the end of the Kissing Tour in support of Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Smith became uncomfortable with the side effects of being a pop-star and moved to Maida Vale with fiancée Mary Poole. Regularly using LSD to cope with his depression, Smith once again felt The Cure was being misunderstood and sought to return to the band's dark side with their next record.

Recording and production

Robert Smith's depression prior to the recording of Disintegration gave way to the realisation on his twenty-ninth birthday that he would turn thirty in one year. This was frightening to him, as he felt all the masterpieces in rock and roll had been completed well before the band members reached that age. Smith consequently began to write music without the rest of the band. The material he had written instantly took a dismal, depressing form, which he credited to "the fact that I was gonna be thirty". The Cure convened at Boris Williams' home in the summer of 1988 where Smith showed his band-mates the demos he had recorded. Had they not liked the material, he was prepared to record them for a solo record: "I would have been quite happy to have made these songs on my own. If the group hadn't thought it was right, that would have been fine." His band-mates, however, liked the demos and began playing along. The group recorded 32 songs at Williams' house with a 16-track recorder by the end of the summer; following this, the group continued to write.

When the band entered Hook End Manor Studios in Reading, their attitude had turned sour towards Tolhurst's escalating alcohol abuse, although Smith insisted that his displeasure was caused by a meltdown in the face of recording The Cure's career-defining album and reaching thirty. Displeased with the swollen ego he believed his band mates possessed, Smith entered what he considered to be "one of my non-talking modes" deciding "I would be monk-like and not talk to anyone. It was a bit pretentious really, looking back, but I actually wanted an environment that was slightly unpleasant". He sought to abandon the mood present on Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and the pop singles they had released, and rather recreate the vibes on the band's fourth album Pornography (1982). Suicide was another topic Smith thought about on several occasions. Shortly before the band started recording Disintegration, two teenagers committed suicide in a nearby town. It was revealed that the pair played The Cure's early albums during the act. Smith kept a newspaper clipping of the incident pinned to the wall in the studio: "I know it's tragic, but at the same time it's grimly funny because it obviously had nothing to do with us. We are just singled out."

Tolhurst, meanwhile, was becoming a nuisance. The band found him impossible to work with, and he spent most of the recording process drunk and watching MTV. The members of the band, save for Smith, would taunt and physically abuse Tolhurst simply to get a reaction. Smith recalls that Tolhurst turned into someone he did not recognise: "I didn't know who he was any more and he didn't know who he was either. I used to despair and scream at the others because it was fucking insane the way we were treating him." At that point, Smith was allowing Tolhurst to remain in The Cure simply because he felt an obligation as an old friend. The other band members, finally, threatened to quit if Tolhurst was not fired before the end of the recording session. When Tolhurst arrived to the mixing of the album excessively drunk, a shouting match ensued and he left the building furious; this effectively terminated his tenure with The Cure. Although Tolhurst claims differently, Smith and the rest of the group confirm he contributed nothing to the record. Thereafter, O'Donnell became an integral member of The Cure, instead of simply a touring musician. Despite Tolhurst's ejection from the group, Smith told NME in April 1989, "He'll probably be back by Christmas. He's getting married, maybe that's his comeback." Tolhurst, however, did not return.

Release and reception

Disintegration was released in May 1989 and peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart; the highest position the band had placed on the chart at that point. In the UK, the lead single "Lullaby" became The Cure's highest charting hit in their home country when it reached number five. In the US, due to its appearance in the film Lost Angels, the band's American label Elektra Records released "Fascination Street" as first single. The follow-up single to "Lullaby", "Lovesong", became The Cure's highest charting hit in the United States, when it reached number two on the Billboard charts. The success of Disintegration was such that the March 1990 final single "Pictures of You" reached number 24 on the British charts, despite the fact that the album had been released a year prior.

Rolling Stone gave Disintegration a rating of three and a half stars out of five. Reviewer Michael Azerrad felt that "while Disintegration doesn't break new ground for the band, it successfully refines what the Cure does best". He concluded, "Despite the title, Disintegration hangs together beautifully, creating and sustaining a mood of thoroughly self-absorbed gloom. If, as Smith has hinted, the Cure itself is about to disintegrate, this is a worthy summation." Melody Maker reviewer Chris Roberts dismissed the claims that Disintegration was not a miserable record and, noting the tone of the album and its lack of melody ("You'll be lucky to find a tune on here. Or a gag".), he commented that "The Cure have almost invisibly stopped making pop records". Roberts summarised the album as "challenging and claustrophobic, often poignant, often tedious. It's nearly surprising". Music reviewer Robert Christgau gave the album a grade of C+, citing most of his displeasure as a result of Robert Smith's depressing nature: "by pumping his bad faith and bad relationship into depressing moderato play-loud keyb anthems far more tedious than his endless vamps, Robert Smith does actually confront a life contradiction." "As with so many stars," Christgau continued, "even 'private' ones who make a big deal of their 'integrity,' Smith's demon lover is his audience, now somehow swollen well beyond his ability to comprehend, much less control. Hence the huge scale of these gothic cliches." Retrospectively, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic gave the record a four and a half star rating out of five, and applauded the band by saying, "The Cure's gloomy soundscapes have rarely sounded so alluring, however, and the songs – from the pulsating, ominous 'Fascination Street' to the eerie, string-laced 'Lullaby' – have rarely been so well-constructed and memorable." Erlewine went on to praise Disintegration for being "darkly seductive", and "a hypnotic, mesmerizing record". Pitchfork praised the record, admitting "Disintegration stands unquestionably as Robert Smith's magnum opus." The review noted that "scant few albums released in the 1980s can boast an opener as grand as 'Plainsong', the most breathtaking, shimmering anthem the band ever recorded."

Disintegration has been included in numerous "Best Of" lists. Rolling Stone placed the record at number 326 on their 2003 compilation of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". The magazine's German counterpart, however, placed Disintegration at number 184 on the same list. The album was considered to be the best album of 1989 by Melody Maker, 17th on Q magazine's "80 Best Albums of the 80s", and 38th on Pitchfork's "Best Albums of the 80s".

Music

Template:Sample box start Template:Multi-listen start Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen end Template:Sample box end Disintegration was Robert Smith's thematic return to a dark and gloomy aesthetic that The Cure had in the early 1980s. Smith deliberately sought to record an album that was depressing, as it was a reflection of the despondency he felt at the time. The sound of the album was a shock to the band's American label Elektra Records; the label requested Smith shift the release date back several months, telling him the album was commercial suicide. Smith recalled "they thought I was being 'wilfully obscure', which was an actual quote from the letter [Smith received from Elektra]. Ever since then I realised that record companies don't have a fucking clue what The Cure does and what The Cure means." Despite rumours that Smith was one of the only contributors to the record, he confirmed that more than half of the dozen tracks on Disintegration had substantial musical input from the rest of the band.

Disintegration is epitomised by a significant usage of synthesizers and keyboards, slow, "droning" guitar progressions and Smith's introspective vocals. "Plainsong", the album's opener, "set the mood for Disintegration perfectly," according to journalist Jeff Apter, by "unravelling ever so slowly in a shower of synths and guitars, before Smith steps up to the mic, uttering snatches of lyrics ('I'm so cold') as if he were reading from something as sacred as the Dead Sea Scroll." Smith felt the song was a perfect opener for the record, describing it as "very lush, very orchestral". The album's third track, "Closedown", contains layers of keyboard texture complemented with a slow, gloomy guitar line. The track was written by Smith as a means to list his physical and artistic shortcomings.

Much of the album made use of a considerable amount of guitar effects. "Prayers For Rain", a depressing track (Raggett noted: "the phrase 'savage torpor' probably couldn't better be applied anywhere else than to this song") sees Thompson and Smith "treating their work to heavy duty flanging, delay, backwards-run tapes and more to set the slow, moody crawl of the track." Others, like the title track, are notable for "Smith's commanding lead guitar lines [that are] scaled to epic heights while at the same time buried in the mix, almost as if they're trying to burst from behind the upfront rhythm assault. Roger O'Donnell's keyboards add both extra shade and melody, while Smith's singing is intentionally delivered in a combination of cutting clarity and low resignation, at times further distorted with extra vocal treatments."

While Disintegration mainly consists of sombre tracks, "Lovesong", "Pictures Of You" and "Lullaby" were equally popular for their accessibility. Smith wanted to create a balance on the album by including songs that would act as an equilibrium with those that were unpleasant. Smith wrote "Lovesong" as a wedding present for Mary Poole. The lyrics had a noticeably different mood than the rest of the record, but Smith felt it was an integral component of Disintegration: "It's an open show of emotion. It's not trying to be clever. It's taken me ten years to reach the point where I feel comfortable singing a very straightforward love song." The lyrics were a notable shift in his ability to reveal affection. In the past, Smith felt it necessary to disguise or mask such a statement. He noted that without "Lovesong", Disintegration would have been radically different: "That one song, I think, makes many people think twice. If that song wasn't on the record, it would be very easy to dismiss the album as having a certain mood. But throwing that one in sort of upsets people a bit because they think, 'That doesn't fit'". "Pictures Of You", while upbeat, contained poignant lyrics ("screamed at the make-believe/screamed at the sky/you finally found all your courage to let it all go") with a "two-chord cascade of synthesizer slabs, interweaving guitar and bass lines, passionate singing and romantic lyrics". "Lullaby" is composed of what Apter calls "sharp stabs" of rhythmic guitar chords with Smith whispering the words. The premise for the song came to Smith after remembering lullabies his father would sing him when he could not sleep: "[My father] would always make them up. There was always a horrible ending. They would be something like 'sleep now, pretty baby or you won't wake up at all.'"

The Prayer Tour and aftermath

Following completion of Disintegration, Smith noted that The Cure had "despite my best efforts, actually became everything that I didn't want us to become: a stadium rock band". Furthermore, Smith claimed the album's title was the most appropriate one he could think of: "Most of the relationship with the band outside of the band fell apart. Calling it Disintegration was kind of tempting fate, and fate retaliated. The family idea of the group really fell apart too after Disintegration. It was the end of a golden period."

The Prayer Tour began in Europe shortly after the release of the album. The band performed numerous high-profile concerts, including shows in front of over 40,000 fans over two nights in Paris, the 1989 Roskilde Festival, and a sold-out show in London's Wembley Stadium. Following the European leg, the band elected to arrive in North America for their upcoming US leg by boat, instead of plane. Smith and Gallup shared a fear of flight, and ultimately lamented the upcoming dates, wishing to reduce the number of concerts they booked. However, the record label and tour promoters strongly disagreed, and even proposed to add several new shows to the itinerary. The first concert in the United States was at New York City's Giants Stadium, where 44,000 people attended. 30,000 tickets had been purchased on the first day alone. The band were extremely displeased with the massive turnout; according to Roger O'Donnell: "We had been at sea for five days. The stadium was too big for us to take it all in. We've decided that we don't like playing stadiums that large." Smith recalls that "it was never our intention to become as big as this".

During the West Coast leg of the group's American tour, The Cure added the Pixies, Shellyann Orphan and Love and Rockets as opening acts. The band's show at Dodger Stadium attracted roughly 50,000 attendees, grossing over US$1.5 million. The band's notably larger popularity in the United States—virtually every concert in the leg was sold out—caused Smith to break down, and threatened the band's future: "It's reached a stage where I personally can't cope with it," he said, "so I've decided this is the last time we're gonna tour." Backstage, there were ongoing feuds between band members due to the strife onset by Smith. He recalled that towards the end of the tour "I was tearing my hair out [...] It was just a difficult tour." Cocaine use was prevalent, and only ended up distancing Smith from his fellow band members.

Upon returning to the United Kingdom in early October, Smith wanted nothing more to do with recording, promoting and touring for an album. In 1990 "Lullaby" won "Best Music Video of 1989" at the BRIT Awards. The Cure also released a live album titled Entreat (1991), which comprised songs from Disintegration from their performance at Wembley Stadium, and despite claims that The Cure would never tour again, Smith accepted an invitation to headline the Glastonbury Festival. O'Donnell, after two years with the group, left to pursue a solo career, and was replaced by the band's guitar technician Perry Bamonte. Smith, who was influenced by the acid-house movement that had exploded in London that summer, released a predominantly electronic remix album, Mixed Up, in 1991.

Track listing

All songs by Smith, Gallup, O'Donnell, Thompson, Tolhurst and Williams.

1. "Plainsong" – 5:12
2. "Pictures of You" – 7:24
3. "Closedown" – 4:16
4. "Lovesong" – 3:29
5. "Last Dance" – 4:42
6. "Lullaby" – 4:08
7. "Fascination Street" – 5:16
8. "Prayers for Rain" – 6:05
9. "The Same Deep Water as You" – 9:19
10. "Disintegration" – 8:18
11. "Homesick" – 7:06
12. "Untitled" – 6:30

The tracks "Last Dance" and "Homesick" are not included on the vinyl version of the record.

Personnel

• Robert Smith – Vocals, electric guitar, keyboard, bass guitar, production, engineering
• Simon Gallup – Bass guitar, keyboard
• Porl Thompson – Guitar
• Boris Williams – Drums
• Roger O'Donnell – Keyboard
• Lol Tolhurst – Credited for "other instruments", but later revealed to have had no involvement.
• Dave Allen – Production, engineering
• Richard Sullivan – Engineering
• Roy Spong – Engineering

Chart positions

Album

Chart	Peak positions
UK Albums Chart	3
US Billboard 200	12
Australian ARIA Chart	9
Austrian Albums Chart	5
Canadian RPM Chart	22
Norwegian Albums Chart	7
Swedish Albums Chart	10
Swiss Albums Chart	4

Singles

Year	Song	Peak positions
		UK	US Hot 100	US Modern Rock	US Main- stream Rock	US Dance Club	AUS	AUT	FRA	IRL	NOR	SWI
1989	"Lullaby"	5	74	23	—	31	5	28	22	3	5	14
1989	"Fascination Street"	—	46	1	24	7	—	—	—	—	—	—
1989	"Lovesong"	18	2	2	27	8	—	—	—	13	—	—
1990	"Pictures of You"	24	71	19	—	33	—	—	—	9	—	—
"—" denotes releases that did not chart.

References

• Apter, Jeff (2005). Never Enough: The Story Of The Cure. Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-8256-7340-5. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)