Album Review: The Cure "4:13 Dream"

I was listening to satellite radio the other day and amidst all the crappy singer-songwriters doing 80's covers and straight-up crappy singer-songwriters, on came a song that sounded a lot like The Cure circa 1992. With so many bands citing them as an influence nowadays, I figured it was just a new group copping their sound. Wrong. Sure enough, it was the Lovecats themselves. A big fan, I next assumed the song was a gem I had missed from the Wish era. Wrong again. Much to my surprise (and delight), there I was listening to "The Only One," the first single off the band's new album, 4:13 Dream. A bouncy and bubbly instant classic, the song hears little Bobby Smith cooing to the point of near babytalk, a little off for a 49-year-old, but it's sweet to know his heart hasn't died. And neither have the band's tight sound and sincere stabs at experimentation. 4:13 Dream is a well-rounded mix of New Wave, Beatlesque melody, grandiose shoegazing, and some pretty raw and sinister rock with only a few missteps along the way. "Freakshow" is The Cure for the iPod generation, a waste-no-time extraterrestrial rock song with a lead section awash in wah-wah and Smith snarling away like an angry young man again. Things calm down for the "Siren Song," a love song a with a shuffling rhythm akin to The Beatle's "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" with Smith singing "you'll never hear this song again." It's so sweet I hope his prediction is wrong. "The Hungry Ghost" is sharp and unsettling and "Switch" follows like a train into oblivion with a shattering delay and bleak keys. Smith is backed up by a chorus of his own ghosts to help him serenade and win his love back on the sing-along "Perfect Boy." With his love firmly back in place, the band follows with the tra-la-la nursery rhyme of "This. Here and Now. With You." But, in proper Cure fashion, the band dash away all the hope of it's love songs with some really dark stuff at the back of the album. "Sleep When I'm Dead" is a dance song for the fiends of the night, with a bewitching banshee-like chant of the title. The party moves to the carnival in the appropriately titled "Scream" (just listen!). The frenzied gallop of "It's Over" ends it all. 4:13 Dream is perfect bedroom listening, as it is as much a dream as it is a nightmare. It's neither groundbreaking nor complete throwback, but rather a solid album that shows the band doing what they do best.