Bloodflowers Reviews

THE CURE - Bloodflowers
Among the artists who emerged from the UK underground in the late-'70s, Robert Smith couldn't have been high
on the list of those expected to enjoy a remarkably long career as a pop star. Short, shy, Camus-reading
depressives just don't fit the rock icon profile, especially when they possess a thin, adenoidal warble of a voice.
But Smith hasn't merely survived, he's thrived, releasing 20 albums in as many years (and probably chewing
through close to that many bandmates in the process). BLOODFLOWERS is The Cure's 13th studio album, the
second featuring the five-year-strong lineup of Simon Gallup (bass), Perry Bamonte (guitar), Roger O' Donnell
(keys), and Jason Cooper (drums), and the only real surprise is how consistently solid and unassumingly inspired it
is. Like Neil Young, another bandleader whose guitar playing is every bit as idiosyncratic as his singing, Smith has
essentially been writing variations on the same limited number of musical themes for the past decade or so: familiar
melodic threads of Cure classics like "Inbetween Days," "Just Like Heaven" and "Fascination Street" are woven
into the textured fabric of BLOODFLOWERS. The result most resembles a less dense and gloomy
DISINTEGRATION, with its swirling layers of chorused guitars, steady, driving backbeats and contemplative
lyrics. In other words, it sounds exactly like a Cure album should, reinforcing the notion that at this point Smith is a
genre unto himself. - Matt Ashare

There is also a side box that gives the album release date and says R.I.Y.L. (Recommended If You Like): Disintegration, Pornography, The Head on the Door.

Bloodflowers is just what doctor ordered to put England's The Cure back in bloom
By Kelly Brant
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Bloodflowers, the band's 13th release in 21 years, is moody, melancholy, manic and, of course, mopey. It's
The Cure, and I'm stilll in love. The Cure has gone from life music to mood music, but for a part of me it'll always
feel like heaven to hear the king of melancholy, Robert Smith, sing, especially now that it seems The Cure has
abandoned the floaty, chipper Wish sound and returned to its signature darkness. The doom, gloom and the rough
edges are back.

The CD only has nine songs, but with an average lenth of 6 minutes you won't feel like you're getting shortchanged.

Standout tracks are "Out of This World," Watching Me Fall" and "The Loudest Sound."

Grade: A

After 20-years career of artistic and commercial success The Cure, or rather their leader  - Robert Smith is still a
decadent, melancholic dreamer, who realises his visions without care about what is in fashion nowadays. The new
album ‘Bloodflowers’ is almost one hour of music, in which mix of desperation, nostalgia and pathos makes unique
atmosphere. The band is giving to us another dose of ultra-emotional , a bit sick pop music, which ruthlessly attacks
the listener’s senses. Over 11-minutes long  psychedelic, Hendrix-alike ‘Watching Me Fall’ is a quintessence of
Smith’s output. There is no hits here, but no slip-ups either.

Roman Rogowiecki

One of the more mainstream proponents of ' goth ', the Cure always had a particular sound - and look that was
distinctively their own.27 million albums on they are still supreme. This album has an equally recognisable feel too;
the voice of Smith and the whole expanse of doom and decay. But what glorious gloom it is. Bloodflowers is an
album of mood, rather than one of nine singles. this is a musical landscape, not a collection of pretty picture
postcards. So you won't be humming Cure melodies in your sleep this time (except perhaps in your darker
nightmares ) as there are no three minute pop tunes here. In a world of hit and miss boy/girl bands though, how truly
refreshing that is. Yet Bloodflowers is not depressingly gloomy. there are the same trademark guitars within the
musical cavern which lift the mood well and make the whole album more and more enjoyable each time, really
getting under your skin. the 'hooks' are overpowering, the bass hypnotic, and the Smith vocals still teetering with
haunting passion. Class acts can still deliver with aplomb and the Cure are classier than most. On the first single
Smith sings " the last day of summer never felt so cold, the last day of summer never felt so old". That hints of
something final from the band - they have threatened such things before - but it's a deathly good epitaph. Suitably
enough for horror freaks; it's their 13th.

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.

Reviewed by Toni Ruperto, Buffalo News

"CLEAN AGAIN"
by Douglas Wolk

Robert Smith is my hero because he didn't kill himself after he made Pornography.  That 1982 album is the spike in
the Cure's career, the high point and the easiest thing to get impaled on; it's the one that begins "It doesn't matter
if we all die" and ends "I must fight this sickness/Find a cure."  Smith is staring suicide in the face for the entire
record; his voice sounds like he's trying not to cry or vomit.  It would have been really easy for him to make it his
Closer or In Utero, and he didn't.  It's like a hero myth or something, where what saves him is his name:  That's the
sickness, but I'm the Cure.
So he returned to the realm of the living to become its biggest cult hero (shh, this is a legend, okay???), with a
ceremonial costume that caricatured the garments in which he faced down Death: a spiky black wig that stands for
the sticky horrible thoughts that poured out of his head, smeared lipstick for sexual loathing and confusion, baggy
black clothes because it looks cool.  The swallows and quavers in his voice became a signature affectation.  He
could get away with anything -- mugging through cheery little videos, inflating all of his songs with arena-rock pomp,
saving the world on South Park -- because he'd come back from that moment, and was therefore entitled to do
anything he liked.

This is satisfying as mythology goes, but the last couple of Cure albums still sucked; the other kind of cure is where
you blow smoke at something until it's dried out and preserved forever.  Their greatest-hits-part-2 comp Galore
falls of abruptly after 1990 (with the exception of Friday I'm in Love, the kind of clockwork pop song that Smith
appears to be so good at it bores him.)  The albums were filled with half-baked-grooves-plus-words, and the words
lost their wit and scariness.  "The world is neither fair nor unfair" he declares on the new Bloodflowers.  That
sounds like the same kind of existential toss-up he's been offering all along (making a choice is necessary but
impossible: I'm alive, I'm dead, I'm the stranger), but it comes off as a sententious pronouncement on How It Is.

Smith's strong point as a lyricist is radical subjectivity -- the kind that's so intense it can only hint at the world
outside the subject's confusion and unhappiness. ("I will never be clean again," he chanted on Pornography; seven
years later, his biggest hit went "You make me feel like I am clean again.")  He's an idol not because he can speak
to his constituency, but because he speaks for them and the scary voices inside their heads.  So:  What does a rich,
succesful 40-year-old artist with a famously wonderful marriage have to be confused and unhappy about?  Not
being able to be confused and unhappy on cue about anything else anymore, when that's the source of his art.
That's the angle Smith is milking on Bloodflowers, which he's effectively announced will be the final Cure album.
 It is also, obviously and explicitly, the last angle he can milk. "The fire is almost out and there's nothing left to
burn," he crows on "39."
Whatever could that title mean?  All that remain are the wig, the lipstick, and the clown outfit -- the accoutrements
of the caricature of the sick man who made Pornography.  So he throws them in and watches them melt.

The sound of Bloodflowers is "anothe Cure album," no more, no less --they stopped challenging themselves
instrumentally 10 years ago with the techno dabbling of Mixed Up (Sleater-Kinney fans might want to compare it's
remake of "A Forest" with 'Dance Song '97).  They've gone back to their most comfortable territory, which means
abandoning their hits' perkiness and concision.  The new album is all murky, midtempo jams on a few chords, with
an average length over six minutes.  For those of us who prefer the inside of Smith's head to the outside, that's good
news.  Bloodflowers' centerpiece (front-loaded at track 2) is "Watching Me Fall," one of the most overwhelming
things he's ever written.  For 11 minutes, he drags his voice and guitar from note to note in a barely broken line,
desparing convincingly about separation from self in general and his irreparable outgrowing of his constructed
identity in particular.  "I'm watching me scream," he screams -- not even "myself".

On the album, his burnout is the focus; o stage at Roseland two weeks ago, it was the context, and the blandly
professional backup crew didn't help.  In a not-too-fruitful attempt to keep himself interested, Smith eschewed
almost all of the Cure's pop moments in favor of bombastic, listless churns from his old records.  When he dragged
out a handful of Pornography tunes, they conjured up the thought of an aging Ian Curtis and his pickup band
reviving "Atrocity Exhibition" in 2000.  Which would be better than having no Ian Curtis at all.
Smith has talked idly about quitting before, but this is a good place to stop: after the Cure have enjoyed the
late-blooming fruits of the moment when he decided to keep living, and before they lose touch with it altogether.
The first line of the new album is "when we look back at it all, as I know we will."  The uncertainty they've traded
on for 20 years, of whether Smith will be there to look back, is absent.  But cures end when the disease is gone.
 Go on. Just walk away.  Your choice is made.

Grey highlight

Tuesday February 15.
Kjell Henning Thon.

Continues the group's musical voyage with sad sounds. Better than in a long time. The Cure's distinctive character
is probably as much a strait jacket as a peculiarity. "Bloodflowers" is the group's best album in a decade, but it may
still have been better before.

In their hopeless gloom The Cure have been special. The term "Cure-rock", spoken when characterising another
band, creates images of a group where cobweb-black guitarsounds builds under a dark, melancholic voice singing
abandoned about melancholy love.

And that's where vocalist Robert Smith continues with "Bloodflowers". It's the third time the group say that this is
their last record. If that turns out to be true, this will be a dignified goodbye.

"Bloodflowers" is a complex record, as their last good album, 1989s "Disintegration". Through their whole carreer
The Cure have had simple, catchy popsongs as well - "Lovecats", "Lullaby, "Friday I'm In Love" and "Close To
Me". When "Bloodflowers" gets some time it's this kind of songs that will be missed the most. Best song: "Where
The Birds Always Sing"

"Claimed to be the last work by robert Smith and Co. (being actually them nothing more than 41 years old
singer's anonymous companions at all) we can finally get the latest work of our loved Cure. A very troubled
record we shall say (as it should've been already out  around last spring, but was endlessly delayed by means
of the perfectionism of Robert Smith), nevertheless strongly awaited, Bloodflowers is the eleventh studio album by
The Cure, not counting collections and live records. So we have nine tracks, for 60 minutes of both ecstasy and
pain, well performed by the same bunch who four years ago gave life to Wild Mood Swings.
Co-productor, instead of Steve Lyon, this time is Paul  Corkett (already with Pale Saints, Strangelove, Tori Amos,
Depeche Mode, Placebo, Nick Cave) who perfectly gives assistance to Smith, toying with various tricks of self
quotations and legacy at various levels with the clear aim of making this record the third part of a trilogy
started in 1982 with Pornography and carried on with 1989's Disintegration. One thing that can be noticed is that in
those records the covers showed Smith's face, such as in  'Bloodflowers'.

The face is always the same: smeared lipstick, black painted eyes, big hairs. The voice, by consequence, is quite
the same: obscure, claustrophobic and desperate as in the last twenty years.
The opener "Out Of This World" is moody, with a two minutes long intro: a struggling ballad moving slowly
through  ethereal guitars and sweet piano melodies.  With a stunning feedback intro the 11 minutes long
"Watching Me Fall" follows: probably the moment in which  BF mostly recalls the ghosts of Pornography. Then
there's a soft break with "Where the Birds Always Sing", sweet, moving and recalling the acoustic moods of WMS'
Numb; a very solid "Maybe Someday" follows, the perfect choice for the american market: guitars' melodies are
definite, its rythm recalls something of Lullaby and there's even a perfect unexpected organ solo."The last day of
summer" is a beautiful song, even if its arrangement seems no 100% spontaneous at all; the surprise is the
wonderful "there is no if..." a very thin ballad,  unusual and fresh: still acoustic guitars with a few piano notes and a
whispering voice. Very familiar sounds the guitar  parts in "The loudest sound" all along a soft hip-hop tempo,
being it the last ray of light before the very obscure ending  that Smith has chosen for this record.
"39" is aggressive, with a breathless drumming, solid bass  lines and epic guitars (similar to Pink Floyd "crazy
diamond" era) and the funereal title track whose lyrics are icy as marble: never fade, never die / you give me
flowers of love / always fade, always die / I let fall flowers all blood ...

In short: still Cure, always Cure. Very, very Cure-ish. Sometimes too much at all."

THE CURE'S MATERPIECE

With Bloodflowers The Cure are back in the corner of melancholy, and this is where Robert Smith is able to create
his greatest songs. Together with Pornography and Disintegration, the new CD makes up a monumental trilogy in
the rock music.

It contains everything The Cure has been famous for (and despised for) in the last couple of decades: Bloodflowers
(the long awaited album from one most essential british rockbands) which turns out just as monumental as hoped!
There are so inviolable and direct threads back to outstanding albums like Pornography (1982) and Disintegartion
(1989) that it is fair to claim that the new album together those to make up a trilogy. But at the same time
Bloodflowers rests strongly in the present -like the other albums did when they came out. And the further You get
towards the core of Bloodflowers, the more advancing of perspective the new songs are experienced (which in tone
and attitude are in line with Robert Smiths best Cure-songs ever).

 When Smith is in the gloomy mood (when his thoughts are just as bright as a blown bulb in a bricked up
"soot-polished" coal cellar) his creates a special and intense mood in his music, that is approaching monotony, but
reveals several vigorous layers in time with You're moving  towards his darkened world.

 "Bloodflowers" also lead the thoughts towards Irish U2, who have an approach that resembles The Cure. But
where Bono during the 90's has gotten several bruises, Robert Smith and The Cure have kept the integrity. "Ten
wild" record-companies or flattering promoters could not make Robert Smith do anything that he does not feel is an
artistic necessity. Maybe thats why Robert Smith affects so much more than Bono has in recent years.

A UNIFIED WHOLE
 "Bloodflowers" is experienced as a unified whole that cannot be seperated in single sequences. The gloom and the
pain is convincing, and above all carried out, which is why the album stands in sharp contrast to the light Wild Mood
Swings (that compared to the new album, is a parenthetic pop-album without the gravity that in general has been
and is again characteristic of The Cure).

What it exactly is that makes the Cure such an eminent rockband is difficult so say. But it is partly due to the
intensity and sincerity by which Robert Smith goes about it.
The music is without moments of beauty - it's often experienced chaotic, floating, or monotonous. The strength has
to found in the eminent interplay between Robert Smiths vocal and the simple, but striking orchestration. Examples
of this are the modified, beautiful, and heartfelt "There's No If.." or the 11 minute long and impressively carried
out "Watching Me Fall".
When Robert Smith "sneers" out his pain with his voice, than Perry Bamontes guitar (for example) does the same:
the connexion is formidable. The mood is unique. "Bloodflowers" is a materpiece. Neither more or less.
(6 out of 6)

Masters of Darkness

The Cure are back with their best album in 11 years and if one is supposed to believe frontman Robert Smith it is
also their last one. "Bloodflowers" is the last part of a trilogy where "Pornography" from 1982 and
"Disintegration" from 1989 were the 1st and 2nd.
To the poor people who do not know those two albums, it means that The Cure are back as the masters of darkness.
And it is not jut dark and nihilistic, but also extremely beautiful guitarpop when The Cure are doing the 11 minutes
long "Watching Me Fall", the title track, and "The Last Day Of Summer".
The pop songs - which The Cure also master - has been dropped in favour of "the absorption" (or deepness) in the
approx. one hour lasting "Bloodflowers", and the 9 tracks get space and time to unfold and are able (as real classic
Cure songs do) to lead the listener far far away from ordinary world.
And if this is the last album with the worlds oldest indieband it is a hammering worthy end after more than 20 years
on top. The album is out Wednesday.  (5 out of 6)

PICTURE: The leadsinger Robert Smith of The Cure claims that the last part of the trilogy, which began with
Pornography and Distintegration finished with Bloodflowers, is their last album.

"History would teach us that this should be the last Cure album for the actual line-up, given that no one in the past
could resist in the band for more than three records; moreover, there are unconfirmed claims of splitting and of a -
still vague to tell the truth - solo project by Robert Smith.
Nevertheless it doesn't feel as it's the end at all: Bloodflowers is one of the most intense Cure records ever, even
though it has not the power and the energy of the first records, it's a solemn all time classic that hard core fans will
enjoy.
Loads of keyboards and acoustic guitars on psychedelic progressions on which Smith's voice spreads with a rather
thoughtful than gloomy mood with not even one pop tricky incident such as Friday I'm In Love: on the contrary,
there's no room for less than four minutes songs (except There Is No If) to which are preferred longer and intense
tracks.
The longest one of which, Watching Me Fall, sounds like the heart of this record with its courageous 11 minutes,
along with the aggressive 39 - a Smith classic - and the dreamy moods of The Last Day Of Summer."

Written by Hans Fredrik Hansen

The melancholiac's high priests must certainly be Robert Smith and The Cure. Like earlier releases this new
product is hard and sombre without being depressive. I have liked this group for many years and it is a pleasure to
see that Smith is still doing very well. Titles such as "The Last Day Of Summer" and the 11 minute long "Watching
Me Fall" are superb songs which have been taken into my private Cure "the best of" collection. The Cure prove
that they by all means still are living and this album is more than enough!!

XXXX-tra strong (4 out of 6)

"Doom and gloom served half-baked"
By Michael A. Liebel, 21

In the early 1980's, The Cure made mopey music fun, Albert Camus cool and post-punk a viable commodity.
Oh, and along the way they wrote tons of hit singles.
Writing hit singles is what The Cure does best.  From the modern rock staple "Just Like Heaven" to cult favorites
like "Fascination Street" and "Hot Hot Hot!!!", The Cure carved out a niche in the rock landscape.
So, what should one do when The Cure releases a new album like "Bloodflowers" (Fiction/Elektra)?  If you're a
diehard fan, buy it immediately.  If your Cure collection consists of  the singles collections "Staring at the Sea" and
"Galore", buy the singles.
Much like the rest of the band's output during the 1990s, "Bloodflowers" is basically a singles collection with filler.
The filler here is interesting at least.  The 11-minute-plus opus "Watching Me Fall" sounds like a U2 experiment
gone horribly awry.
Vocalist Robert Smith sounds like he's listened to "Rattle and Hum" far too many times, hitting Bono-esque notes
like they're going out of style.
"There is No If" works well as a Cure ballad, I guess, but is otherwise melodramatic and laughable.  here Smith
works on his self-loathing: "If you die, you said/So do I, you said/And it starts the day you make the sign."
It'll likely be released as a single, much to the enjoyment of masochists around the world, I assume.
 "39" gets my vote as the best song on the album.  Smith and company bring back a little of that old
Disintegration"-era magic.  The lyrics find Smith at his most ironic: "So the fire is almost out/And there's nothing
left to burn/I've run right out of thoughts? And I've run right out of words."
With rampant speculation that "Bloodflowers" is The Cure's final album (haven't their last five albums been
greeted with this speculation?), "39" takes in a particularly poignant scope.
 "Bloodflowers" is a surprising follow-up to the relatively happy "Wild Mood Swings."  Smith seems to have fallen
back into his pit of depression, much to the joy of longtime fans.  Unfortunately, the experimental spirit of
"Wild Mood Swings" is gone, ultimately leaving "Bloodflowers" a mediocre effort.

My Grade: C

"What is the only thing that Tina Turner and Robert Smith have in common ? At every album, they both imply
that it's the last... But here stops the comparison. Because Robert Smith, for 20 years that he has been working at
the head of  Cure, has always prefered the uncomfortable ambiguity instead of vulgar efficiency. That guy and his
band are even a living paradox : at the age of 40, still with the hair and the make up of a  diverting schoolboy, Smith
has yet never been so dignified and modest. And his music, that doesn't repect any of the essential criterias for a
good pop song any more (a refrain, a (gimmick ?), laconism), is still so fascinating for who wants to immerse himself
in it. This album, about the 20th, is said to be the last part of a trilogy begun with Pornigraphy (1982) and continued
with Disintegration (1989). No songs in this album, in the commercial meaning, but long lyrical flights (on the
average of 6 minutes); the whole scaned by the thrifty voice of the leader, a sort of non-voice, with an almost
exhausted diction immediately identifiable. Like an introspective symphony in 9 movements dedicated to frustration
and despair. Definitively beyond normality, Smith and Cure - will the one ever be without the other ? - seem to
confess here their defeat in finding a cure for the melancholy that lives inside them and makes them. Incurablely
moving."

A welcome return to form, tapping the finest elements of the Cure's melodic misery and updating their sound
without embarassment.  The last 10 years of the Cure should be stricken from the record; Bloodflowers picks up
right where 1989's Disintegration left off, this time with a real drummer and the rare pop moments more subdued
but just as worthy.  Maybe Robert Smith is about to fulfill his eternal threat to bury the band, singing lines like, "I
know we have to go - back to real lives where we belong." If that's true, he's going out with a bang."

4 out of 5 stars

Their best is when they’re down and announcing the end of the band

Frequent using of lipstick supposedly causes bad changes in one’s brain. In case of Robert Smith it rather causes depression, because The Cure regularly come back to dark moods. After times of frenzy pop songs they came back to dark side releasing ‘Disintegration’ in 1990. Similar situation is now with ‘Bloodflowers’ released on The Valentine’s Day. BF takes up lyrical and music threads loosen 10 years ago, that will probably make the fans very glad. It is The Cure’s best album since ‘Disintegration’ - it’s compact and played better than the previous ones by - surprisingly - the same line-up: Smith-Gallup-Bamonte-Cooper-O’Donnell, which is probably the most stable of all band’s line-ups. It is going to be quite difficult for them to launch out even one such huge hit as ‘Friday I’m In Love’ - the crisis in Robert’s long-time relationship with Mary marked the record with too much melancholy.
Smith announced the end of The Cure many times during last decade, so his current declarations about this case should not be taken seriously. Anyway - one thing is obvious: it’s better to say ‘stop’ now than after releasing a worse album than this one. 3 out of 5 (‘good’)
Bartek Chacinski

"Full of lush guitars and synths, soaring melody lines and unrepentant pathos Bloodflowers is an album that gloomy
Wednesday Addams would swoon over. Robert Smith, still the very essence of deranged angst, conveys the
mix of longing and pain that made earlier Cure releases such hits, while he simultaneously stretches his band to new
musical heights. Showing no evidence of the Cure's former propensity for pop, Bloodflowers is first and foremost
a fan's album. That should make a whole bunch of goths very happy - no matter how much they deny it."

'Bloodflowers' is the sound of Robert Smith, for 200% doing what he wants. More than ever, The Cure is a one
man band (although Smith would object this out of politeness and with a little bit of hypocrisy). And more than ever
The Cure operates in it's own universe. The title of the opening song, 'Out of This World' would be the perfect title
for a box with the complete work of The Cure, cause this is the way the band sounds at it's best moments.

In 1977 RS set up a group willing to create an antidote (and this is the origin of the group's name) for the bloodless,
banal, impotent pop music on the radio and in the hit parade. Smith & Co. have fulfilled that high ideal with varying
success during a period of twenty years, but if The Cure stops to exist, pop music would certainly loose some of it's
color. Who else could have made hits out of such extreme, heavy and (in this world of narrow-minded radio
stations) ultra-radio-unfriendly songs ('Primary')? Who else showed so much playfulness ('The Lovecats', 'The
Walk', 'Let's go to bed', In Between Days', 'Hot Hot Hot!')? Who else sang about caterpillars ('The caterpillar'),
spiders ('Lullaby'), claustrophobia ('Close to me'), trains ('10.15') and even succeeded in bringing these
uncommercial songthemes to the top of the hit parades all over the world? And who else succeeded in selling out
mass tours every time, even while almost nothing happened on stage and while you could most of the time even
not see the band because of the expressionist lightning or the impenetrable smoke curtain? It makes the shitty
parts of The Cure (witch hair cuts, smeared lipstick, quarrels amongst the members) easy to take.

On 'Bloodflowers', the black Cure rules, the good news is that especially the subtle tints as nightsky blue
('Watching Me Fall'), silver grey ('Maybe Someday') and moss green ('Last day of summer') dominate. In other
words: all that the Cure was famous for (ink black texts, melancholic melodies, doom rythms) sounds as powerful as
ever on this record, but more subtle. What once was the sound track to 'Gormenghast', sounds richer and more
subtle, without sliding towards Gothic 'lite'.

Not everything on this record seems to be like RS had in mind. To renew a classic band (though carefully and step
by step) is not always a good idea; this can be heard in 'The Loudest Sound', in which the breakbeat-loop is clearly
wondering how it has stranded in this song. 'The Loudest Sound' sounds like The Cure is jumping someone else's
train, to phrase another Cure-song.

For a time Smith seemed to think he had sung out, but the irony is that '39', with it's cynical and prospectless self
pity ('I used to feed the fire, but now the fire is almost out and there's nothing left to burn) is one of the best
songs on the album, due to the swinging groove and the trancy sledgehammer-rythm.

Some songs on Bloodflowers have this typical wall of sound (in the past this was too often a wailing wall, but here
it's subtler and warmer than ever). And it is like it is: it's *their* wall of sound. Time is a thing RS doesn't lack and
he clearly expects the same from us. Sometimes it's asked too much: 'Watching me fall' is an impressive song and
deserves to be over three minutes long, but Smith turns it into eleven, and live this might give a wonderful trance,
but on the record, I'd rather have seen two more songs. And one or two light points in the -albeit wonderful-
darkness should have been there too in my opinion. 'Bloodflowers' is the best Cure album since 'Disintegration',
but a hit like 'Lullaby' isn't on it.

If the hysteria of the two thousand happy ones at the kick-off of the European tour in the Ancienne Belgique
recently is an indication , the end of the Cure will bring a deep mourning with it. But it's not that far yet: 'See you in
july' RS mumbled after the fourth encore. I wondered what he meant, but he loosened the grip of his teeth and
flittered away before I could ask.

Serge Simonart

RECORD OF THE MONTH :
THE CURE : Bloodflowers (Polydor/Universal)

These days, the problem to which the great bands from the 80s are confronted is that no one expects anything from
them anymore. Who, in Y2K, seriously watches out for the next U2 album ? Strangely, the Cure still arouse a
world-wide interest that is very palpable on the web, especially the french web as testified by the frenzy which took
place when the band recently came to Paris. Likely, this is the outcome of two essential and crucial facts for whom
appeals to some kind of eternity. First of all, Robert Smith and his works have never dissapointed : in Blooflowers
for instance, Out of this World warmly and acousticly most-welcomes the listener, Where the Birds Always Sing,
reminiscent of the unhealthy times of Pornography, There is No If wrinkled with controled anguish, or 39, a mutant
and ironic paving stone, have all conserved this special artistic and sonic quality which contributed towards the
establishement of the groups reputation. Secondly, and above all, the Cure always sounds like the Cure.
Misinterpreted, this compliment could turn against Bob & Co but, without being of a bad disposition, one can state
that the band has always been faithful to itself : no move into techno/electronic music, no attempt for easy-listening,
and no (or maybe just a very few) keyboards which are intentionally recognizable. Only long hypnotyzing tracks
edified by heavy, plethoric,wriggling and dribbling guitars. Smith doesnt sacrifice to any fashion and insolently
demonstrates that personnality remains the most efficient instrument for musicians who want to mark their time.
4 out of 5.

the cure -bloodflowers

Sting may laid claim to the title King of Pain, but diehard Cure fans know this appellation really belongs to morose,
mascara-streak frontman Robert Smith. And  if Bloodflowers is to be, as has been widely reported, the Cure's
comeback and last hurrah, smith has a chance to go out like Michael Jordan did-on top. Moody, gothic, and full of
smart lyrics, the album measures up to the band's best-even if the sound is a bit dated. So drag out that black trench
coat one more time; tonight we're gonna wallow like it's 1982,---S.B.
3 out of 5

The Cure
Bloodflowers

The finishing of "Pornography" and "Disintegration" - brilliant.

Everything is said about love, about sorrow, about desperation and death. About fading of flowers,about
transitoriness of existence, about hanging above the abyss. A millennim full of loneliness and tears. So,what does
Robert Smith in the next millennium? He sings about love and sorrow, desperation and death. And he does it with
the same addictive emphasis and impotent gestures as on the most beautiful, most romantic and blackest Cure
album "Disintegration". That was 1989, that was "Lovesong". Today Smith sings in the so-called midlife-crisis,
which he had probably ten years ago: "`I said I love you` I said / You didn´t say a word / Just held your hands to my
shining eyes / And I watched as The rain ran through your fingers / And smiled as you kissed me." The music:
a chirp, a breath. Smith, the eternal juvenile. But "Bloodflowers" wasn´t a Cure album if it wasn´t ambivalent. In
"39" rages the most splendid Cure-Malstrom, a single big Smith lament: "I used to feed the fire / But the fire is
almost out / And there´s nothing left to burn." How comforting and wonderful that this isn´t true at all. It´s
particularly this song where the guitars rage like they did in no other Cure song of the 90´s, which just consisted of
"Wish" and "Wild Mood Swings" - respectable albums but none of those opened hearts for Cure fans.
On "Bloodflowers" (and in the song "Bloodflowers"), you got milling guitars, that blow away every moshpit -
compared to this, our american college friends seem like tame dwarfs (what they are indeed). There are
conjurations of the last day of summer, journeys to the place where the birds always sing and the hunch of another
world. And there is Smith´s singing which actually is a weeping. But it isn´t whining. "The world is neither fair nor
unfair / The idea is just a way for us to understand / It´s just us trying to feel that there´s some sense in it." The
philosophers said that before. But we rarely liked to hear it that much, as we do now.

4.5 out of 5

The Cure - Bloodflowers
(3 1/2 stars out of 4)
"On what may well be The Cure's final album, singer/songwriter Robert Smith again demonstrates that darkness
needn't be monochromatic. He finds a multitude of hues in the shadowy corridors of human fear and loneliness,
emotions that wrestle with hope on nine richly textured songs. Bloodflowers matches the epic breadth of song-cycle
precursors Pornography(1982) and Disintegration (1989), though now a wistful resignation supplants despair as
Smith seeks to make sense of his surroundings in a world that "is neither just nor unjust." The Cure's most
compatible lineup to date builds gorgeous and dramatic soundscapes of swirling keyboards, surreal guitars and
hypnotic rhythms, creating a heavy yet ethereal platform for Smith's aching yowl. His vivid words, alive with
imagery and emotion yet devoid of hysteria and cliches, dwell on the terror of isolation and loss as he studies a
stagnating relationship in The Loudest Sound and the inability to fully trust love in the title track. Just as passion
and somber insights coexist in the lyrics, the music accommodates pretty melodies, sophisticated arrangements and
raw assaults. While 39 considers the energy-depleting decay of aging, the message rides on a furious rock engine,
suggesting that Smith's mid-life crisis could be the catalyst for artistic growth."

The good news:  Robert Smith and company have made another elegiac album full of regret, loss, and death.
The bad news:  Like a crappy actor hamming up a death scene, these doddering Goth-pop luminaries can't take
their own hint.  "These flowers will never fade," croons Smith on the repetitive title track, a song that somehow
manages to be both overblown and lethargic.  Perhaps he's referring to the contrived bluster and synthetic gloom
that blooms all over this disc like so many plastic begonias.  After more than 20 years and 20 albums, you know the
drill: The swirling keyboards, the reedy guitars, the cheap melodrama, and that endless case of elusive, rainy-day
women who exist only in Cure songs. There are brief shining moments.  You can actually feel the chill in the aging
Smith's bones on "The Last Day of Summer."  Mostly, though, the band seems to be hitting the midtemp-Cure
sampler button on a synthesizer in much the same way that a coke-addled rhesus moneky pokes his Skinner-box
switch for a fix.

THE CURE – BLOODFLOWERS

The last album, probably.  An irreconcilable, but grandiose late work.

"I realize we always have to say goodbye/ always have to go back to real lives/ but real lives are the reason why/
we want to live another life" sings Robert Smith  in 'out of this world', the album opener. For 23 years he has been
the singer and guitarist of the cure,  a gloomingly shining star who has displaced generations of teenagers into deep
melancholy. He has announced  a good many times that the cure have published their definitely last album.
'Bloodflowers' again is supposed to be the definitely last album . But this time you are inclined to believe him. This
13th album, declared smith, is the missing last part of a trilogy which began with pornography (1982) and the
masterpiece 'disintegration' (1989).

Once again The Cure did an album free of all the commercial ambitions under which their last records suffered. An
album whose songs take as long as they take, sometimes more than 7 minutes . An album which allows those
characteristically resonating and dissonant guitars and aerial keyboards to endlessly stream along. Robert Smith
sings and sings as if he was simply  happy to hear his voice. He’s not searching for unambiguous melodies, he
doesn’t distress himself for a poppy chorus, he wreathes (somtimes gently, sometimes manically) through long lines,
which are probably the dreariest in his career.

In the past, Smith conjured everlasting love with solemnized sublimeness; but now, each of the new songs bemoans
the finitude of all things. 'there is no if...' is a sobering reply to the romantic cure classic 'lovesong', 'there is no
always forever'- the realization which remains.

The singer takes an unsparing, a regretful look back; quarrels with himself and the world.
If his songs weren’t envolded in these nine songs, there would be nothing left but depression.With The Cure he
always knew how to transact the greatest despair into a defiant feeling of triumph, and this -  despite of all the
bitterness -  with a dignified, luminous beauty.

If this is really going to be the last album, then robert smith managed a worthy, a great leave.

(3 points out of 3)

The Cure, Blood Flowers (Elektra)
FEW ROCK STARS have been as predictably cool as long as Robert Smith has.  Throughout a career that's seen
Smith and the Cure rise from dingy clubs to huge arenas, the Cure's mop-topped, make-up wearing front man has
remained his same gloomy self.  But Smith's down 'n' out shtick never seems to grow old, mostly because he's
always pulled beautiful melodies from his twisted depression.
The experimentation continues with Blood Flowers, a new album that coincides with the band's twenty-year
anniversary.  Rather than release a lame greatest hits package, Smith has found nine new, stunning ways to
languish in his despair, including an eleven-minute psychedelic jam and some gloriously grungy Zeppelin-style
ballads.  Better yet, Smith is singing with more conviction and heart than ever--making each and every tune both
hypnotic and believable.  The result may be the most oddly uplifting record in years: after all, we're all still happier
than Robert Smith and he's a guy with a legendary band and a great new record.  Some things never change.

The Cure - Bloodflowers (Fiction)  ****

Scientists probing the secrets of ageing should probably pay some attention to Robert Smith. Here he is, a
millionaire at 40, yet in mind at least still the doomy adolescent that gave us 1982's Pornography. Yet more lyrics
about misery and snow should be laughable, but impressively The Cure have conjured up the same scarred magic
that spawned Pornography and 1989's Disintegration. Smith - yet again - suggests this album might be their last,
but I doubt it. What else could he possibly do? Grow up? (DS)

"After more than 20 years of gloom, The Cure has been gradually acknowledged as one of the most influential
forefathers of alternative rock: Many of today's stars were yesterday's shy bedroom Goths, receiving guidance
through Robert Smith's depressive opuses, and the group has been slathered with cultish devotion throughout its
career, even when critical praise has been tentative at best. Finality is a recurring theme for Smith; he's always
singing about ending a relationship, his life, and in many cases his band. Sadly, after a surprising run of impressive
albums, The Cure might have missed its chance to quit gracefully.

Wish (1992) was one of the group's strongest albums--teetering on the edge of hope and despair--and it
conveniently concluded with a song called "End," but the band survived yet another of Smith's numerous break-up
threats. Too bad, as 1996's Wild Mood Swings was the group's most erratic album since 1984's The Top, an
uneven exercise in eccentricity hurt by the absence of drummer Boris Williams, an integral part of The Cure's
sound since its pop breakthrough with The Head On The Door. Wild Mood Swings' failure must have disappointed
Smith, as well, as Bloodflowers returns to the harrowing and hypnotic territory of Pornography and Disintegration.
(Smith claims it's the conclusion of a trilogy.) The album does seem to pick up where Disintegration left off, offering
long, casually cathartic songs driven by minor chords and loopy, languid drones. "One last time before it's over,"
Smith sings on "Out Of This World," which serves as a sort of sequel to Disintegration's elegiac "Untitled." But
Smith isn't going out without a fight, as the 11-minute "Watching Me Fall" immediately attests. Bloodflowers
remains predictably dark, but the album has its bright qualities: The band has subtly integrated electronic elements,
and Smith's songwriting is (relatively) less dirge-like than in the past. (Acoustic guitars help.) Though songs like
"Where The Birds Always Sing," "Maybe Someday," and the title track each exceed five minutes, they revel in
trippy psychedelia and melodious melancholia, rendering the album diverse but not unfocused. But by the time the
dour disc gets around to "Bloodflowers," the question of finality still lingers: Is the album's lasting message
"never die" or "always fade, always die"? Only Smith, who's working on his solo debut, knows for sure, but
Bloodflowers makes for a heck of a break-up album. Let's see if Smith takes his own cue. --Joshua Klein"

The record that Cure fans have been waiting for years: the cure goes on with flowers of blood.
Best songs: everyone.
Best reference record: Disintegration.
While the sound and the gothic atmospheres of The Cure were imited by many bands worldwide, in 1996 Robert
Smith took his band towards a different direction, with the discontinuos Wild Mood Swings. Four years later, after
many claims of wanting to split the group, Mr. Smith finally goes back to the sound that belongs to him and put off
the idea of a record as a mere collection of songs and gives life to an opera solid like a milestone.
Out of this world is the perfect introduction before the emotional Watching me fall. "While demoing in my house, it
was 22 minutes long... " Smith confesses; "there were many changes and it seemed endless. It was quite like an
entire album in just one song. Then we decided to cut it off to 11 minutes". The feeling is  suffocating in a song that
slowly builds up a claustrophobic atmosphere note by note, between echoes and screams. The same atmosphere
goes on for the rest of the entire record, even thanks to the lyrics (some confessions are embarassingly sincere...).
It's impossible to separate one song from the others, just like trying to extract a single brick out of a wall. The only
bleka moment in the entire album is the electro mid tempo of The Loudest Sound, an episode that can't anyway
scratch away the uncommon beauty of Bloodflowers.
Rating: 8 out of 10.

The Cure go back in their familiar territories in  which they showed to be masters and give us this record which
represent yet another example of how  it's still possible to make a record not following any fashion. BF is moody
and struggling: beautiful songs such as The Last day of Summer or the opener  Out of this world or the epic savage
title track could only be written only by the inspired hand of Robert Smith.
If anger was the main feeling of Pornography and despair was dominant in Disintegration, melancholy is the taste
we're left in the mouth listening to Bloodflowers, which is the third chapter of this trilogy of masterpieces. If there
has to be an end very close for the Cure as widely rumoured, then there couldn't be a better way.
Rating 7 out of 8.

The Cure
Bloodflowers

You have to be a real fan to remain loyal to Robert Smith & Co. for twenty years. That applies especially for the
last decade, where the brits rarely did justice to their status as godfathers of gloomy Wave. The low is marked by
"Wild Mood Swings" that didn´t come up just with the usual depressive arias, but also with embarassing Salsaflirts
and dumb rock. "Bloodflowers" isn´t that failed indeed. But there neither is a reason to rejoice, because even after
a long break, capital ideas are in short supply. Robert Smith solemnizes his typical whimping singing to mostly
overlong , climaxless languishing bombast-epics. But where he used to bring on quite oppressing moods in minor in
the past, you just got cultivated boredom today. And there´s just little use in embellishing those symphonies of
sorrow with hushy piano strumming, twisted guitar solos and psychedelic attributes. The famous spark just doesn´t
flashover.

The Cure
'Bloodflowers' Polydor

The vessel theory of pop longevity is at its most convincing when discussing bands like The Cure, who haven't
actually gone crap, yet whom our interest seems to have expired. Put briefly, the theory is that every band is a
vessel which, over the course of time, will hold only a certain amount of our fascination. Inevitably though, some
vessels are bigger than others. The Blur vessel, for instance, seems bottomless - it never ever seems to fill -
whereas at the other extreme, The Sleeper one turned out to be a thimble.

The Cure one? Well, if The Cure's vessel finally filled up with 'Disintegration', its quirksome successors showed
that to be no great shame. However, when people ignore 'Bloodflowers', it'll all be rather sad. It is you see, full of
what Robert Smith does best - That peculiarly shambling angst that manages to sound both claustrophobic and vast.
'Watching Me Fall' is a case in point - 11 sublime minutes of thrashing, crashing melancholia, which for once
vindicates the band's tendency to only play profitable tin barns. Even better is 'The Last Day of Summer', which,
like halcyon corkers, 'Catch' and 'Lullaby' effortlessly hooks you into its own dreamworld -  A Narnian delight of
shy, shuffling drums, absently strummed acoustics and, yes, the odd goth inflection.

To highlight specifics, though, might be to miss 'Bloodflowers' real coup - managing to be more than the sum of its
parts. It's what the more aged among us like to refer as an ' old-fashioned album'. What a shame they couldn't have
made it when more people were listening.
Peter Paphides

THE CURE
Bloodflowers
Fiction FIXCD31/543 123 2, £15.99
MORE THAN 20 years into their tortuous career, the Cure have made one of their finest albums - nearly up there
with the classic Disintegration. But, eight years since the last Cure song most of us remember (Friday I'm in Love),
will anyone care? The trademark wall of guitar is intact, but it's the more delicate songs, such as Out of This World,
that provide Bloodflowers' best moments. Robert Smith's lyrics are typically melancholy and, with lines such as
"It's time to go" and "The fire is almost out", he seems to go out of his way to fuel the rumours (again) that this is
the last Cure record. If Disintegration, or the earlier Pornography, hold a treasured place in your collection, you
should buy this; but if you like the Cure for their occasional frothy pop songs, don't bother. ME

The Cure `Bloodflowers' (Polydor/Fiction)

Apart  from  a  couple of soaring, majestic tracks this is a sad end to a career.  It  takes an hour to ramble through
nine tracks, and seems longer. It's a bloated, sub-stadium blob heading off into the downside of oblivion.
(2 out of 5)

Bloodflowers
(Elektra/Fiction)

This  is  it,  the  last  Cure  album.  Word  has  it after 24 years and fluctuating  lineups  that  the  chief  proponents
of English mope rock are ready  to  call it quits after having crafted ``the most perfect Cure album ever.''
That's mascara-wearing vocalist Robert Smith talking.

This  is  me:  After  the  botched eclecticism of the group's last album (1996's  Wild  Mood  Swings), Bloodflowers
is the most perfect example of a classic Cure album. The gloom floats in heavy like the mist on a Tim Burton
movie  set, melodies reveal themselves only in snatches of synth or tweaked guitar  licks,  the pace flows leisurely
like plump bubbles in a lava lamp, and  Smith's choked-up vocals mouth lines like ``This feeling never goes.''
Bloodflowers  (out  Tuesday)  is  a  concerted  effort  to  return  to  the atmospherics  of  1989's  hit CD
Disintegration,  but it doesn't have the immediacy  of  that  set's accessible singles Lovesong and Pictures of
You. The guitars here are also more prominent.

In  short,  Cure fans will love it. Those looking for an easy entry like the  atypically  cheery  1992 single Friday
I'm in Love might be put off by Bloodflowers'  dense  sound,  but  few turn to the Cure for Top of the Pops
fare, anyway.

 - HOWARD COHEN

The Cure
Bloodflowers
The new album "Bloodflowers" of The Cure is not their last one (as you could read in some articles). Singer Robert
Smith: "Don´t you write this, someone of my record company misunderstood this, when he visited us in the studio
and I told the band as ever: "Play as if it was our last album!" I don´t want people to buy it for nostalgic reasons,
but because it is a great album." It is. One of those rare, precious ones, that grow with every listening instead of
wearing out. It definetely isn´t a hit album or inventive in some Y2K-technical way - but it´s full of unbelievable
beautiful, melancholic soulburners. You know from the very first note to whom you are listening, so unmistakable
is the guitarsound. It is the proof that, even during the millennium fever where every aging musician tries to cover
every grey hair with new technique, it is possible to write in a very own handwriting, without being boring or uncool.
If you listen to this Cure album without being touched by "Where The Birds Always Sing", "The Last Day Of
Summer", "39" or the titletrack "Bloodflowers" you are truly burned out.
5 out of 6

Bloodflowers lies very close to the Bands own 11 year old Disintegration. This is obvious already in the opening
song Out of this World, which is almost a sedated version of Pictures of You, from Disintegration. The
connection to this album isn't a coincidence, because the Cure view Bloodflowers as the final part of a trilogy,
beginning with Pornography from 1982 and continuing with Disintegration in 1989. Three very thorough albums,
with sure concepts and few of the catchy single hits, which often play a big part in the in between albums. The year
2000 version of the Cure doesn't offer many new musical sides of their talent, and it probably suits the fans just
fine that it isn't a new version of the around-the-world postcard, Wild Mood Swings (96). Bloodflower is by far a
more mellow and clear album in comaprison to the two other parts of this trilogy, and as a lyrical composer, Robert
Smith has never been better. On the beautiful track, Where the Birds always Sing, Robert Smith clearly sings
about his view on life, death and the human soul. The strongest track is by far the more than 11 minutes long
guitardrivenWatching Me Fall. Whether Bloodflowers will be The Cure's swan song is yet to be seen, but it is
obvious that Robert Smith has flirted with this possibility. For example, in 39 he sings: "So the fire is almost out
and there's nothing left to burn / I've run right out of thoughts and I've run right out of words". Is Robert finished
at 40? Bloodflowers is definitely an album about finishing.
5 out of 6

BAROQUE

THE CURE
Bloodflowers

Tomorrow we will already remember The Cure as one of the most remarkable bands of rock history. On the other
hand, today it seems that The Cure are just another relic of the reviled 80´s who are releasing a new album. Robert
Smith has still got this strange hairdo and his visagist still carries it  too far. It notoriously and symphonically nags
and  whines  megalomaniacly piled up layers of minor melodies out of Robert Smith´s red besmeared throat.
However, where the bandleader-grown lingering lament used to stick his head in the sand in former times, today
Robert puts his head oblique in sweet melancholy or shakes it to something that The Cure would call "Rock".
Stadiumrock? By no means. The Cure play these damned places for the masses indeed for a long time, but
simply to give every one of the thousands a guaranteed individual eventexperience. An own cosmos -
BLOODFLOWERS is one too. The opener "Out Of This World" carries off there: the brushed drums spot, the
tiny melody of the crystalclear leadguitar persists in it´s echo, then the cymbalroll solemnly swells, a kitsch piano
pearls over tearfilled pillows under which old Robert jabbers significantly. A suction of a song. The following
"Watching Me Fall" is a heavy lump - for more than eleven minutes Robert howls to the sawing guitars. No, The
Cure simply can´t rock, just baroque. This inevitable piling up, this high-as-the-sky stacking agrees much more with
the solemn songs. Those are called "The Last Day Of Summer", "The Loudest Sound" or "Where The Birds
Always Sing" and they are, every one of them, "a tragedy for every one", as Robert sings in the last one. Here
and there you get a few new, modern sounds, even samples. These suit especially well to the brittle but touching
"There Is No If...". Besides this actually makes no difference - like The Cure make no difference outside their
own cosmos and don´t notice anything happening outside. Eccentric epicdoers.
4 out of 6

REVIEW: The Cure, _Bloodflowers_ (Fiction)
- Don Share

"When we look back at it all, as I know we will," Robert Smith sings on the first song of his latest album, "we
always have to say goodbye." Twenty years and twenty Cure albums may have culminated with _Bloodflowers_,
rumored (as has nearly every album for the last decade) to be the band's last gasp. Intended as the final disc in a
trilogy which began with 1982's _Pornography_ and continued with 1989's _Disintegration_, _Bloodflowers_ has
finality literally written all over it.
No wild mood swings here... it's all down; fortunately, down is up for Smith, whose writing - diverse in other
atmospheres - is effably sad and indelibly wise when he plays in a minor key. The production is full, dense, and
atmospheric, and the songs don't rush themselves, but take their own bittersweet time. "I've been watching me
fall for it seems like years," he sings accurately. And what singing: Smith's voice flies high over the chasm,
echoing and quavering, even when the lyrics direly insist that "if it can't be like before I've got to let it end."
While endings are the theme, Smith is subtle enough to let in tiny but illuminating rays of possibility: "the world is
neither fair nor unfair," he sings in "Where the Birds Always Sing" -- fair enough.
"Maybe Someday" even (ambiguously) allows that "maybe someday is when it all stops -- or maybe someday
always comes again." "There Is No If" -- one of Smith's best ever -- admits that "there is no if -- just and," and
"and" just may be enough.
Recognizing that "just enough" is all that life allows is what each moment of the album gets at. "The Loudest
Sound" is the evil twin  of the Beatles' "Things We Said Today," because its lovers "in silence.. pass away the
day." But they have more than silence; they have each other. Yet "39" is about how when one's "fire's almost
cold," then "there's nothing left to burn," and the epic title track, "Bloodflowers,"  is the eerie, grim culmination
of everything The Cure have ever done: "never die, these flowers will never die" slowly grows into its lyrical
counterpart, "always die, these flowers will always die." The song is Smith's epic, and ends with our hero's
pricking himself audibly, letting flowers of blood fall.
When it's all said and done, I can't quite believe that we've heard the last from Smith, though there's always that
risk; after all,  epics live in the retelling, and while flowers fade and die, there are always more flowers to come.

The Cure are back at their morbid best, sure to make die-hard fans happy ... or not...

After more than 20 years, with 20 albums and over 27 million albums sold, you'd think Robert Smith would find it
hard to write such morbid, depressing self searching albums as 'Bloodflowers', but here it is. Along the lines of
'Faith' and 'Disintegration', this album is dark, moody and written for the last moment of life, ideal for walkman or
solo rush-hour crawling as it could kill a dinner date with any one track. With Robert Smith (voice, guitar, askew
lippy), Simon Gallup (bass), Perry Bamonte (guitar), Roger O'Donnell (keyboards), and Jason Cooper on drums, it's
one of the strongest and longest lasting Cure line ups since the mid-eighties. Recorded in actress Jane Seymour's
house using Paul Corkett (Depeche Mode, Placebo, Nick Cave) co-producing, 'Bloodflowers' is unmistakably The
Cure but overall manages not to sound too dated.
'Coming Up' is the most upbeat track with searing guitars and swirling psychedelic keyboards, the lyrics remain
severe, "every part of me is bruised and raw and pained I'm coming up in the dark and every part of me is loose
and sore and stained.." O.K. Then there's a couple of love songs, both sweet, tender and optimistic from within their
gloomy wrapping. "... if you die, you said, so do I..." Get the picture ? I thought I was happy when I put this on, now
as I stare into space and contemplate the distance to the Harbour Bridge, or Grafton now that the extra high fence
has gone, I'll tell you I love you as I walk away.

Jello

"The Cure: Bloodflowers
A fond farewell to one of the greatest bands of all time.  For all the fans and continually tortured souls out there,run
to your CD Express and buy the swan song from one of the modern music's most interesting bands.  Bloodflowers
is said to be the completion of The Cure's blacker than black trilogy (Pornography/Disintegration).  Expect haunting
sounds that are strangely romantic.  So come on, join the den and light a candle-if a band is to die, this is the way it
should go."

Every album with the Cure since ”Kiss me kiss me kiss me” has been announced  to be the last one by the
frontman Robert Smith. But effective, he has kept life in the group. Although that the presence during the nineties
has been considerable less frequent than during the eighties. Close a year delayed,  the group once again is
affected by the rumours about the final. And if you  couldn’t hear it in the previous albums since 1987, you can
definitely hear it now. They are back in the valley of death-shadows. A walk with uncle Anguish hand in hand with
sister Dismal. The hopelessly is characterising the lyrics, the minor-key is tolling misery with the groups
paradoxical skill to be a healing bath at the same time. A cure of the Cure. Bloodflowers is not so perverse heavy
depressive like “Pornography” but  neither as poppy as the following albums. But there isn’t a line, a chord or
a harmony that is making a Cure-fan like me disappointed . “I used to be the fire” Robert sings in the desperate
“39” with a voice that you doesn’t think should be able to fade. It’s magnificent and if this is a testament from
Robert Smith, it’s heart-pounding beautiful, well worthy the king of depression that faithfully has been holding the
positions for the last twenty years.

4/5 (Very good)
 
 

(U-WIRE) LINCOLN, Neb. -- What a great post-Valentine's Day gift. The Cure's new album, "Bloodflowers," is
set to be released on Feb. 15th here in the U.S., the day after Valentine's, and it's the perfect soundtrack for lonely
hearts across the nation.

Many Cure fans felt let down by 1996's "Wild Mood Swings," an album that seemed guided by its title. Where
were the swirling guitars of 1992's "Wish," and where had the doom-and-gloom mentality of 1989's
"Disintegration" gone?

"Bloodflowers" is just the return the Cure needed.

Cure frontman Robert Smith was quoted in several interviews last year saying that this album would form a stylistic
triptych with 1982's "Pornography" and 1989's "Disintegration," and this was no exaggeration.

Musically, "Bloodflowers" straddles the line between "Wish" and "Disintegration," taking the harrowing
emptiness of the latter and mixing in the dizzying guitars of the former.

The horns of "Wild Mood Swings" are nowhere to be found, thankfully.

Combinations of soft acoustics and slippery electrics meld the Cure's heavy guitar sound together. This is an album
best listened to on headphones at full blast.

None of the songs on the album are short, and it's obvious Smith is reaching for a much more epic feel.

Only one song clocks in under five minutes. The album's longest run is just over 11 minutes. But none of this
detracts from the songs at all.

"Bloodflowers" also marks a return to the bleaker lyrics of the past, the despondent and depressed pleas of
heartache and solitude.

It's exactly what to get a single person for Valentine's Day, or the perfect way to say it's over to that
not-so-special-anymore person in your life.

Smith sings in a sorrowful, bitter whisper on the title track, which closes the album, "This dream always ends/I
said/This feeling always goes/The time always comes to slip away/This wave always breaks/I said/The sun always
sets again/And these flowers will always fade."

It's a depressed resolve of someone who's come to terms with their depression but not overcome it. Most of the
album is like this - not directly sad, but more bleak, which is what puts it in the same field as "Pornography" and
"Disintegration."

And yet the aching beauty of the music played along with the lyrics gives that much more definition to the album.

There is a small strike against the band, as one of the best songs on the album, "Coming Up," is only on the vinyl
and Japanese CD versions.

According to the band's Web site, it'll be available as a B-side eventually, but the song provided an energetic
contrast to the rest of the melancholy album.

The songs range from the buzzy guitars of "The Loudest Sound" to the acoustic splendor of "The Last Day Of
Summer."

From the opening notes of "Out Of This World" to the closing whispers of "Bloodflowers," the album is one big,
beautiful, intense downer.

Ultimately, though, Smith is at his finest in years, and "Bloodflowers" ranks as one of the best albums the Cure has
done to date.

(C) 2000 Daily Nebraskan via U-WIRE
 
 

THE CURE'S SWAN SONG RINGS TRUE

Robert Smith has made this album before.  Many times before, in fact. Twenty years since his first album with The
Cure, he's become something of an anomaly: a veteran rocker who rarely strays from the path he first headed
down, preferring to widen the expanse of his original landscape o nly to make way for deeper paths of emotion and
increasingly dour artifice - paving his yellow brick road to hell with thcik flowing blood, hard-fought tears and, OK,
some sweat beneath that erratic makeup.
He is one of the few true auteurs of pop music.  As with Scorsese or Truffaut (or Dylan or Springsteen ), you can
rebuff his vision, but you cant't deny what it is or the powere it packs - and you recognize it the instant you hear a
single note.
So it is that "Bloodflowers" (in stores Tuesday), appropiately the band's 13th studio album, isn't likely to win new
converts.  Relentlessly bleak and overglowing with Smith's majestic minor-key melancholia,  there's not an ideal
single (certainly no "Friday I'm in Love" or "Mint Car") anywhere amid its nine tracks, though the grandiloquent,
psychedelic optimism of "Maybe Someday" comes close.  The album's sonic wall of weeping will be manna from
heaven for shoe-gazing followers but impenetrable death-drone for anyone else - and even diehards may have to
dig through the band's past to truly share in its every last shiver.
Head back first, then, to "Pornography" (1982) and the flawless epic "Disintegration" (1989), as it's been rumored
(and these things always ring true) that "Bloodflowers" is the culmination of a trilogy formed with those landmarks
in lowness.  Indeed, The Cure here seems to have set aside the mementary lapses of giddiness from its last two
albums - the silvery sonorousness of "Wish" (1992) and the deceptive charm of "Wild Mood Swings" (1996) - in
favor of scaling new heights of misery, returning to the lumbering, somber pace and intensely swirling layers of
guitar that marked the band's greatest heyday.
As such, this one sounds like what it almost certainly is: the band's swan song.  What at first seems like more
gothic, ruinous romance is easily translated as Smith's rationale for calling it a day - and, strangely, he sounds
content with his decision.  The man who once seemed so conflicted -  who sang in "End," from "WIsh," "I think
I've reached that point where giving up and going on are the same dead end to me" - appears to have made amends
with being an aging icon (he turned 40 last year) who doesn't want to wind up stodgy and laughable.
 "We always have to go back to real lives," he sings in the seven-minute opener, "Out of This World."  "We only
get to stay so long."  Then later: "one last time before we it's over / One last time before the end."  By the
penultimate track, "39" he's chanting in his shaky hysteria - "the fire is almost out, the fire is almost out" - before
concluding that "there's nothing left to burn."  The body is gone, the spirit lives on - so lets;s fade out through all
7 1/2 minutes of the tribal but funereal title track.  Thus THe Cure has been neatly buried - half-alive  ( they could
do this forever, you know), half gratefully dead.
Of course, now that he's made his grand exit on disc, Smith surely will stupefy all of us by carrying on for another 20
years; he's only implied that The Cure was about to break up, oh, 17 or 18 times, and besides, the band's going to
tour this summer (coming to Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in May, so don't fret when you don't get tickets to the
Palace warm-up next weekend).
Whether he's just bluer than blue or truly ready to quit, however, makes little difference.  Let him remake Let's Go
to Bed," if he wants.  He's written his "Taps."

GRADE: A

Sounds
The Cure: enough moaned

gz. For more than 20 years The Cure supplied teenagers all over the world with a desolate and probably just therefore consoling soundtrack for their hormonal insecure world of feelings: the moaning testimony of someone who’s feeling even more miserable. At the age of “39”, as an autobiographical song of the new album is called, bandboss Robert Smith doesn’t want to serve. “The fire is almost out and there’s nothing left to burn”, he’s moaning in his unmistakably, self-pity-dripping voice, and so he’s legitimating his decision that “Bloodflowers” should be the last studio-album of the probably best-known English wave-band. For a last time though The Cure is stage-managing their mixture of angrily-defiant punk-attitude, eerie restrained gothic-rock and melancholy dreamy pop. So various songs drown in unbearable suffer-pathos and sound-chaos, but others are, one more time, focussed to lovely pop-songs, although a hit like “Friday, I’m In Love

Read this and weep: Robert Smith, the floppy-haired maestro of mope, is back and-happily-he's miserable.  Since
their 1980s heyday, songwriter Smith and company have strummed, hummed and moaned through a string of
international hits, all pretty much focusing on lost opportunities in love and other small agonies.  And though the
British band's lineup has changed over the years, they have always kept the quality of their lush, dark music
uniformly high, with the exception of 1996's unsatisfying search for a new sonic identity on Wild Mood Swings.
Fans of the Cure's signature echoey guitar-in-bathroom sound-a major influence on younger bans like the
Cranberries-will enjoy hearing Smith again confidently bleat lines like "It used to be so easy/But the last day of
summer never felt so cold."  With more than 27 million records sold, how unhappy can he be?
Bottom Line: Sad rockers cry again".

(They also have a picture of the band with the caption "Goth darn it: Robert Smith and the Cure continue to age
thier fine whine.")

"Robert Smith's songwriting has always possessed more depth and sensitivity than his mope-meister image would
suggest. Nowhere is that more apparent than on this poignant song cycle, on which introspective numbers speak of
endings and departures with a resonant midlife melancholy - and an implicit sense of hope - making this one of the
band's most affecting works."

Grade:  A-

THE CURE
Bloodflowers
2 out of 5
Pop (Fiction/Universal)

One last album. Then the Cure has promised to quit.
Seems like a good idea, I think. What was once one of England's most innovative and fascinating bands, capable of
creating both shivering cold, frightening darkness and stunning beauty has become a tired institution repeating
boring conventions. I hear some melodies of classic Cure-beauty in "Where The Birds Always Sing, "The Loudest"
and in the melancholy "The Last Days Of Summer", but unfortunatly they have to thread their way through rather
sluggish rock jumble. At their worst, the Cure 2000 even sound like Radiohead. Bye! It was fun while it lasted.

Sex, self-loathing, despair, paranoia, ennui, introspection,   smudged lipstick and tarantula hair. Oh, right, it must
the new Cure album then. Bloodflowers (FIXCD 31   £13.99) is the final serving of a trilogy, which began with
1983's morbid, intense Pornography and continued with   1989's decayed, majestic Disintegration. If the industry
rumours are correct, the Cure's thirteenth studio album might also be their last. After more than 20 years, the
band who got 1980s alternative teens getting in touch with their inner spider are going to wander off into the murky
gloom for the very last time. If so, don't feel sorry for them. Wandering off into the gloom is the Cure's idea of
fun.

Bloodflowers is just what you might expect from the Cure, if all you expect from them is Goth by numbers. As it
happens, I expect rather more, being an early rabid fan of their Three lmaginary Boys and Seventeen Seconds
period. The problem with the Cure is that people tend to dismiss them as Goth, and, as we all know, Goth (ie,
looking slightly avant-garde and erring on the side of melancholia) is a very bad thing, punishable by death or
poor record sales. So that's Scott Walker, Lou Reed, Radiohead and countless others screwed then.

I wouldn't call Bloodflowers "Goth" (its feet are too firmly planted in the real, ugly world), but, on a musical level, I
wouldn't call it good Cure either. Every song is at least twice as long as it needs to be, and most of the melodies
are drowned out by the thud-thud-thud of the rhythm section and Robert Smith's weeping willow vocals. Indeed,
saying that there are no obvious singles on this record is like saying there are no obvious holiday resorts in
Chernobyl. Where are the tunes, guys, where's all that Love Cat grooviness we know you are capable of?

What Bloodflowers has got going for it is brutal, bitter honesty. Lyrically, this is an album of absolutes, which
forces listeners to make big decisions and stick with them - life or death, love or hate, hope or despair, cheese and
onion or smoky bacon? Smith has also been paying attention to the way people really are. When they're tired,
scared, lonely, or simply trapped within the emotional roach motel of a boring long-term relationship. "I've run
out of feeling, and I've run out of world," he cries on 39. This is grown-up novelist territory, and the Cure do it
brilliantly.

“Some great Cure when the slow melancholy of Out Of This World opens the visual field (…) "Robert Smith
reaches the same heights on There Is No If, almost unplugged (…) and the haunting, hypnotic The Loudest Song".
“Inexplicably, between those 15 ecstatic minutes and the other 6 songs of Bloodflowers, the world collapses, an
almost impeccable band turns into a kind of wandering melodic monster. Luminous, The Cure becomes an appalling
band, piling up into never-ending songs (between 7 and 11 minutes), collections of bushy arpeggios, loads of
compact complex sounds that would frighten the most experienced ears; as to the lyrics of Robert Smith(…) tons of
sick loneliness and metaphysical torments with a vocabulary consciously chosen in the perfect suicidal lexis (…)
The Cure songs (39, Watching Me Fall and Bloodflowers) (…) are useless and stupidly suicidal, as if they had to
materialize the end of the road for a band born and (finally) dead with the 80’s.”

“Bloodflowers sounds very much like a redemption”
“Guitars are predominant, the tone, the sound openly refer to the last great record made by the band, Disintegration”
“The 5-piece band has found again its sense of danger, its sense of equilibrium”
“There’s a huge surprise (…) There are no pop songs (…) The Cure favours the twilight climates, breathless diving, always on the verge of implosion”.
4 stars out of 6.

"The Cure in 2000? Who'd a-thunk it? The Cure - the London-based club favorites and mope-rockers of the late
'70s and the arena packers of the '80s and early '90s - is alive and well, sort of.  "Bloodflowers," due out Tuesday,
is a striking, wrenching surprise from a band that appeared dead, dormant, or, at least, creatively spent.  This
nine-track (but 50 minute-plus) CD is a return to form. But which form? Bouncy pop/dance or introspective,
slow-to-mid tempo, guitar-and-synth-based washes and melancholic grandeur?  The latter.  Cure singer-songwriter
Robert Smith is not going for modern rock radio hits here.  He views this as the completion of a semi-bleak but
beautiful trilogy that includes "Pornography" (1982) and "Disintegration" (1989).  Like his idol Lou Reed, Smith is
often at his best when he's torturing himself or being beaten about the brow by the world at large.  "The world is
neither fair nor unfair ... just or unjust," he sings in "Where the Birds Always Sing."  And with the final track, Smith
sings: "The time always comes to say goodbye ... and these flowers will always die."  A call for help?  The end of
the Cure?  Intensely moving art-rock? You decide."

Robert Smith and his buddies  did not follow old recipes ,that want bands to raise their bank accounts , obtain the
favor of record companies and fans……

Bloodflowers was recorded by the same members who gave us WMS . Maybe this phenomenal stability has helped
the band to record with such a success .Maybe again , it is the leading figure of  the band who is responsible for the
final result. Who cares anyway? An impulsive reaction suits more to a record that is swarming with spontaneity and
is one of the most mature , experienced and charming works that Robert Smith has given to us , during the last
twenty years in which he acts in his parallel universe.

From the first notes of Bloodflowers ,the thirteenth studio album of  The Cure ,you can realize that you are
becoming a witness of a return of the band in the first glorious days , where the commercial success seamed far
away , but their huge talent was deeply founded in the hearts of  some people , whose youth was going to be painted
with dark songs. Of course , the degree in which every single album of them is separately responsible for the status
they enjoy today , as one of the most long-lived , fascinating and reliable post punk bands , is highly objective. Yet ,
whoever had the chance to watch them through out the years of their constantly upward career - with the necessary
ups and  downs -  , will agree that the superbness of the group from Crawley of  Sussex can be traced more clearly
in the first years and most of all in the chaotic and dangerous emotional dead ends of Seventeen Seconds and above
all Pornography.

It is in these exacts moments they come back with Bloodflowers , completing a trilogy they started with
Pornography and continued with Disintegration. It is therefore party time for their fans , and everybody else who
always appreciated  the assortement that characterized the biggest part of their discography. There aren’t any hits
in this album an the triumphant result can be attributed to the lack of  anxiety they had. This absence of hits is
replaced by moments of  introvert intense ( do not assume that that the ghosts that chase Robert have gone) ,
atmospheric lyricism and a very deep introspection , procession ,beyond the shadow of any doubt ,of the maturation
of Robert Smith , in any aspect.

Their come back to a new psychological denudation is not succeeded through an offensive change in sound. It is just
that the happy mood of WMS has changed to a loll (though extremely firm) drift for organic presence , that rolls
happily and does not leave you  asleep for the next second of music. It is no accident that the majority of the nine
songs are more than five minutes , a duration that you never realize with tiredness , but admire (try Watching Me
Fall ). The rest of the songs ,from Out Of This World up to the tour de force Bloodflowers , creates an album that
charms the listener with its correct components , the sublime aesthetics and it’s persona. As a result we have one of
the best albums of the year.

We can foresee that the gothic society will attack again , with high moral , after the glorious return of the band that
make it famous in the fist place. Yet it is more important that some teenagers might discover the majesty of music
in this album , silently and collusively , far away from MTV , in the same way that a previous generation , this of the
80’s learned to breathe in their dark dreams. If this is the last Cure album ,it is an excellent alibi for their farewell.
Sometimes , a whole hour of dreamy music endures only…..17 seconds!       (8 out of 10)

Black Thoughts
Robert Smith and crew's eleventh studio album reaffirms their status as a singles band

Face it: British Goth-Popsters the Cure have been running on fumes for ten years. Still, that's less than half of their
life span, not bad for a band that was part of the late-Seventies post-punk fallout. The mere fact that the Cure have
managed to provide the soundtrack for almost two generations of the paint-it-black set suggests that Robert
Smith's formula is a winner: cracked operatic vocals, shameless pop melodies and shimering, melancholy
arrangements with buried, echoey drums.

Even when the Cure were scoring Top Ten Alblum sales, fans knew to treat them as a dance band and singles
outfit.  Smith is incapable of writing five bad songs in a row; even hopeless records(1992's Wish) sport some saving
grace("Friday I'm in Love"). But he can write four bad songs in a row, and Cure ablums tend to leak filler like an
attic spilling insulation.  The latest, Bloodflowers, is half dismissible droning, an unforgivable ratio considering it's
only nine tracks long.

Bloodflowers contiually looks to the band's past.  The opening number, "Out of this World", threatens to re-tread
1989's "Pictures of You" as a spacey farewell.  But unlike its predessor, "Out of This World: is passionless and
without direction, and the Billy Joel-ish piano plinking around the corners is distracting.  "Watching me fall"
features some of Smith's best lyrical fatalism("The night is always young," he bays) and tense cymbal work, but
its multilayered arrangement sounds dated.  The alblums soft, chewy center, five songs' worth, never varies in
rhythm or pace and depends mostly on hard strumming for propulsion. "Where the Birds Always Sing" has no tune
at all, just traces of one you've heard before(in "Why Can't I Be You"). Only "39" has the incendiary grandness of
the old Cure, with berserk guitar lines and drumbeats resounding from a bottomless pit.  But Smith sing's his own
epitaph in his haunted voice: "The fire is almost out."

Robert Smith and The Cure have been one of the  most influential and meaningful bands of the last two decades,
the band that maybe has better evolved  through its long-lived and unique artistic path. Well, those times of 3
Imaginary Boys, 17 Seconds  and Faith are very far and they tend to fade into the senile caricatures of the last
years, to the  point that Blooflowers - to tell the truth very quickly - is really poor of creativity.
The feeling that one gets listening to songs like The Last Day Of Summer, Maybe Someday or Where The Birds
always sings, is that of a tired band, unable to transmit (if not very slightly) something at least involving. This record
isn't even trying to create the pop atmosphere of The Head On The Door or Japanese Whispers.
The collaboration of Paul Corkett suggested us a chance of experimentig something with electronics, but the results
are really deceiving: The Loudest Sound is far too predictable. Something worthwhile comes out just in a few
occasions such as with the Disintegration-ish Out Of This World and There Is No If ... (which recalls Untitled) and
the last two tracks 39 and Bloodflowers. It's a shame, considering that we're talking about a band that's been
feeding us with such struggling beautiful melodies for all these years.

The cure choose st. valentine's day to let out their last record BF. These kind of things perfectly fit into the group's
style. this record was planned to be out in spring 99, then autumn, then february 2000: but the waiting was worth it.
The Cure have always been one of the most umpredictable bands of the rock history: depending by their leader's
Robert Smith  "Wild Mood Swings", they've been able to range from sublime to stupidity. This record, neverthless,
is a little masterpiece. Not to the point to justify the comparisons that have been made lately with Disintegration or
Pornography, by which BF is clearly inspired, but it's a very homogeneous record that easily catches you with its
electro-acoustic melodies. Sometimes The Cure recall Radiohead ... or maybe the opposite, considering that Smith
& Co. have been around for twenty years.
What is missing in BF is the immediate song such as The hanging garden, Lullaby or Lovesong, but there are very
intense moments, such as the opener Out of this world and the long Watching me fall. There are rumours (but
they're not confirmed yet) that BF would have been the cure's goodbye: if it's true, the italian dates of the Dream
Tour in May (Milan, Florence and Rome) will be the last chance to see them playing live; if it's true, BF would be a
really wonderful way to say goodbye and would eventually leave a sour taste in our mouths, considering what
Mr. Smith is still able to do.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10, because it's a record that brings us back The Cure to a High, if not at their best.

 An 80´s icon, The Cure is reopening its wounds at the beginning of  2000 era. The japaneses have known since the
2nd, the europeans will get in touch on 14th and the north-american will listen on the 15th the new Robert Smith and
his coadjuvants´ work. (only March in Brazil). When the curemania devastated Brazil, on vinil, during the 80´s, the
English group records were released without any cronological criteria. Only who had imported ones could listen to
the records on the release order. Bloodflowers isn´t still available on the stores, but the more attentive fans know it
already, downloaded from internet.

Bloodflowers has 9 long, depressing and existencialist songs. Robert Smith, 40 (although one of the tracks is called
39, composed on the day he completed 39), is singing as never and suffering as he always made us believe (some
like it).  At least is what you notice in each second of  the cd, as if they were petals painted with blood. The
inspiration for the title came from letters of the painter Edward Munch, the same who painted "The Scream". But
Smith´s suffering and auto scourge is silent, gray and introspective. The fans will love it.

Conceptual, Bloodflowers finishes a trilogy during decades, that started with the delirant Pornography (1982)
and continued on the acid Disintegration (1989). Despite the proposed density, the new work leaves no doubt:
opens widely Robert Smith´s life. It´s more direct than the others, with less sound textures, what makes it musically
linear. Pornography and Disintegration abuse of eufemisms, propose more but answer less, give more ways to
claustrophobia (and the paradoxos). Smith´s (voice, guitar and keyboards) coadjuvants, Simon Gallup (bass), Perry
Bamonte (guitar and keyboard), Jason Cooper (drums) and Roger O´Donnel (keyboards) have listened to
Pornography and Disintegration before recording Bloodflowers "to feel the mood". The result is good, but inferior.

"Out of This World", the opening, gives the sound of what is to be heard: harmonic sonorous mass, chords in
profusion, devoted vocal (in this case, with a beautiful piano). The tension gets higher in "Watching me fall",
endless disturbing psychological exercise with a good job on bass and guitars. The compression proposed goes on in
almost all the tracks (exception to the good "Maybe Someday", pop and alrealy consecrated on the north-american
radios, with the typical unforseen ending of cure´s best). The suggested complexity, however, if not fake, is little.
There is a fixed formula, with eventual and alternated addings of typical cure songs effects, such as pedal flanger,
tribal drums (very good on "Bloodflowers"), sinphonic keyboards ("The Last Day of Summer")

The good result, despite the inevitable recognizable sonority, is less worth than its historical importance: The cure
revived its verve and wastes personality, even though, compared to the Lol Tolrurst era, the actual line-up sounds
like a clone. Robert Smith is the same romantic and tormented hero that became the 80´s mark. His group/alter ego
releases seeds in 2000 and keeps away from labels.. Bloodflowers is a typical cure record, enough to satisfy a huge
contingent of devotes. If the flowers are made of blood, at least  they don´t have thorns.
 
 

The Cure
Bloodflowers
Polydor/Fiction CD5431232

Absense makes the heart grow fonder, they reckon. Leave it too long though, and other distractions will come
along; Travis, say. Bloodflowers is The Cure's first album since 1996's Wild Mood Swings, their 13th studio foray
all told. Much has happened in between: patchouli-scented stadium rock is firmly on the back foot, goth having long
gone underground. The portents are hardly favourable. Not that increased isolation is likely to perturb either
Robert Smith or his hardest devotees. Steeped in dank spidery melancholy, they rather like things that way.
Wisely, Bloodflowers is every crotchet a Cure album. True, there's no blatant hit single-one of those sudden shifts
into gloriously barmy pop frenzy-but there's still ample compensation to be had in the simple truths of its clammy
lovesongs (The Last Day Of Summer, There Is No If...) and the sweeping guitars of Maybe Someday and, in
particular, Watching Me Fall.
If, as Smith has intimated, this really is the final curtain (read what you will into 39's feverish declaration, "So the
fire is almost out and there's nothing left to burn"), he can at least bow out with his head held high, vision intact,
knowing that he always did his way.

Peter Kane

Star rating: 3 out of 5