3/10/2000 Buffalo News
A Haunting Bouquet
Robert Smith and The Cure have spent the past 20 years crafting songs of
heartache and melancholy (only straying a few times with poppy numbers
like "Friday I'm in Love"). Bloodflowers, the band's 13th studio effort,
is a gray, somber masterwork. It concludes the anguised trilogy of 1982's
"Pornography" and 1989's "Disintegration" (explaining why the opening
track "Out of This World" so boldly recalls "Pictures of You" from
"Disintegration").
The nine songs flow smoothly as a body of work, keeping the tormented mood
with just enough subtle changes to move the record along. It's reflective
material, filled with weariness and despair. "The world is neither fair
nor unfair - the idea is just a way for us to understand," Smith sings in
"Where the Birds Always Sing." "The Last Day of Summer" has an inexorable
sadness mirrored in Smith's words, "Nothing I am, nothing I dream, nothing
is new...the last day of summer never felt so cold." The majestic 11
minute epic "Watching Me Fall" is marked with intense brooding, its final
four minutes wracked in the agony of a mournful guitar punctuating Smith's
cry of "I'm watching me scream." Bloodflowers is a haunting bouqet for
Cure fans.
- Toni Ruperto
