The Cure

The Cure were always a great singles band, but by 1992 they'd racked up so many radio hits that they were an established pop-rock act even in America where "Friday, I'm In Love" helped this become one of their biggest sellers. Wish showcases the Cure as a guitar act while keeping their signature sound intact: boiling brooders, psych-rock freak-outs and love songs.

Near the middle of the Cure's new album, Wish, Robert Smith, the band's singer, songwriter
and guitarist, encounters a girl who says, "It looks like you could do with a friend." This is
funny, and not just because the tune ("Wendy Time") breaks out into the sort of screwball
beat that the Cure revved up so well for "Why Can't I Be You?" "You look like you could do
with a pal/Someone to make you smile," she continues, and no wonder: Five son... More >

Maybe they're SoundScan scammers like Vince Gill and Skid Row, reaping unwarranted cred from a revamped accounting system. Or maybe they're cool alternatives like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, poised to prove the sales appeal of self-dramatizing pessimism. Maybe they're even riding the actual-hit "Friday I'm in Love," which actually sounds cheerful, though by Sunday it's over, actually. In any case, let it be noted that these new wave survivors, a specialized taste of undiscriminating undergraduates for years, have just now scored their biggest album ever, a redolent 13 years after they didn't actually kill that Arab. I ask you, where were the Moody Blues after 13 years? (Riding their second--and final--No. 1 album, since you didn't know.) (Grade - C+)