PolyGram review

The Top

Nor it is more necessary to repeat that Cure is a english group formed ten years ago, bla, bla bla. Cure has already conquered definitively its space in the Brazilian market after having lived a good time in the metropolis undergrounds. It won a gold disc for the expressive sales of the Standing On The Beach - The Singles compilation, had a song in the 20:00 pm soap soundtrack and it surpassed the FM radios' borders. To contain with great style that success sequence, they come to Brazil at march/april.
But before that, the new fans will be knowing the work that the group published in 84, before the release of Concert, the disc that began the conquest of the Brazilian market. It is The Top, a LP that, in the release, divided the critic in the exterior and taken by surprise the most uncautions fans. it appeared in the group period of the 'happy' sequence phase, soon after its more popular success like "The Lovecats" and "Let's Go To Bed". The Top is very far of those freshing climates. Musically it is not as heavy as the depressed trilogy works - Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography, but its lyrics are near the morbid, the desperate.
As in the previous works, the vocalist Robert Smith continues seeking his indefinite and unreachable desire object. It can be so much a caterpillar girl or a birdmad girl, like he expresses in "The Caterpillar" and "Birdmad Girl" lyrics. Sometimes, Robert Smith arrives to the personal crowd, like "Piggy In The Mirror" and "Shake Dog Shake", or close to the suicide, as in "Give Me It".
Everything sounds suffocating, as if there were not exits for the problems that afflicted the Mad Bob's head in that time. But nor everything is despair. There are moments for fine hopes, as in the ecological "Wailing Wall" and "The Empty World". But the disc finishes sad with the track-title that tells exactly the opposite, "The Top". All this covered again by a climate that is between the psychedelic and the arabesque, as indicates the cover and dust jacket art work.
(Tom lećo - March/87)

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