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The Cure - Faith Audio CD

A fair review of the The Cure "Faith" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all The Cure reviews here, or go back to the The Cure tabs.

The Cure Band: The Cure
Title: Faith
Rating:
Release Date: 1990-10-25
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Holy Hour 2: Primary 3: Other Voices 4: All Cats Are Grey 5: Funeral Party 6: Doubt 7: Drowning Man 8: Faith

Three and a half stars. Not my favourite Cure record.
On the previous records the music suggested sadness or outright depression while the lyrics stopped short. Well, here on the third album, the band's lyrics finally catch up with the music. On Faith the song tiles, alone, reveal the story - The Funeral Party, Doubt and The Drowning Man are each as unhappy as the titles suggest! This is not an album that a depressed person should consider listening to alone after dark. For instance:

"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.
I close my eyes and tense myself and screaming throw myself in fury over the edge and into your blood. "

The AllMusic review of this album referring to its lush sadness sums it up rather well. This isn't one of my favourite Cure records. I'm more of a music person than I am a lyrics man. I prefer what preceded Faith and what followed.
.


I love this album

Nothing more to say==the cure is great. I had this on cassette tape from long ago and finally transformed over. Would recommend for all the "new" New wavers, post punk, gothic out there.


Misery and melancholia
Even the uptempo Primary which was a hit single, is full of angst though not without charm with its chugging rhythms. This melancholy album opens with the meandering dirge The Holy Hour and from there, things just get bleaker and bleaker.

The wail of despair resumes in Other Voices, whilst All Cats Are Grey is less claustrophobic with a slow undulating texture creating a more spacious feel. As the title suggests, The Funeral Party is indeed funereal but its saving grace is an awesome melody line. This song would have made Nico of the VU proud.

Doubt is fairly typical Cure faire whilst some impressive guitar work makes The Drowning Man palatable despite the doom and gloom. This seminal Gothic album concludes with the title track, a slow, brooding number with dreamy vocals, a resigned end to the relentless misery.


Do not listen to this record alone
Forget The Sisters of Mercy. This is why the cure will always be known as one of the only 'Goth" bands that really matter. Infact forget everything that you ever thought was termed "Goth" . Listen to the opening lines of the title track and you will be blown away with imagery that would make the most jaded of nihilists think that they should lighten up. .


Faith-A Hauntingly Beautiful Record
E Joy Division, Bauhaus, etc. Faith, As I see it, is the point where "goth" rock lost all of its Violence and Raw agression,(I. ) and became something of a more, well, lyrically stimulating and Musically haunting genre. The Cure had progressed from post-punk masters to Goth Rock visionaries, and the visions represented here, as mentioned in the title of the record, are of the abscence, or loss of faith. I've always interpreted the record as Robert Smith's search for something to believe in, A faith in something that can comfort him, but to no avail. Stunning in it's sheer simplicity Musically, but ability to be as dense as they would ever be (Disintegration, Wish, etc. ). The opening track, "The Holy Hour" is one of disturbing qualities lyrically; "I live/ A vow of Silence/ As one by one the People Slip away", and lets you know that the direction of the record will be just as bleak and depressing as their follow up, "pornograughy. " The second track, "Primary", is as poppy as the band would get on this record, and by the time it shifts into "other voices" all aspects of this Pop-oreintation are lost completely. Heavily Reverbarated more and more as the record progresses, "all Cats Are Gray" takes the desolation to a point where their is some sense of hope, but those thoughts are lost upon the opening of "Funeral Party". Now, Funeral party can be looked at from many different perspectives, but in my perspective, it is simply Loss. Loss of a family member, A Lover, anything like that. It is my favorite Cure song in it's Beauty, and in it's lush, lush sadness. The Cure wouldn't attain these values of Ache-ing sadness again until Disintegration. We then have "doubt", the fast-paced tale of Love gone wrong, and then the listener is dropped into the winter-laiden depression of "The Drowning Man. " Another beautiful track, it contains disturbing imagery much like "one Hundred Years", and, although deceptively misleading, it had potential to reach even more disturbing heights than the work of pornograughy had. Finally, "faith" arises from the ashes of "The Drowning man", and by doing so, ends the album on the lowest note possible. Despite what many Cure Fans think, Particularly that "Pornograughy" is the bands best album, I Declare "Faith" not only my favorite, but their best, Not only Lyrically, But Musically as well. It may not have had Chart Topping material, and the Catchiness that "Kiss Me" and "Disintigration would have, but in it's doom-laiden Dispondency, it retains some of the most dark, gloomiest, and, (Yes) beautiful music ever captured on Recording.
Highly Recomended, but not for first time listeners of the Cure.


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