Thematically and sonically, Disintegration was primarily a return to the dark, gloomy aesthetic The Cure had explored across their key early 80s titles, Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography. When The Cure eventually re-emerged, they did so with a pivotal album that many long-term fans believe still best defines their work. However, they were also intensely productive. It’s well documented that the Disintegration sessions were sometimes fraught, and that they culminated in keyboardist Lol Tolhurst’s departure from the band due to alcohol-related issues. Allen ( The Human League, Sisters Of Mercy, Neneh Cherry) at Hook End Manor Studios, in Oxfordshire, and pieced Disintegration together across the winter of 1988-89. After they demoed over 30 new tracks, the band joined producer David M. However, initial sessions at drummer Boris Williams’ home proved The Cure were keen to get behind their leader’s new material. “If the group hadn’t thought it was right, that would have been fine.”
“I would have been quite happy to have made these songs on my own,” Smith said. As he later told The Cure’s biographer Jeff Apter, he’d even devised contingency plans to record a solo album if his bandmates rejected the morose new material he’d composed.
DISINTEGRATION THE CURE SERIES
His depression heightened by the fact he would turn 30 in April 1989, Smith and his fiancée, Mary Poole, moved to a new house in London where Smith began writing a series of new songs on his own. If The Cure’s music is all about seeing the beauty in the darkness of humanity then there is perhaps no better expression than that of Disintegration.“I would have been happy to make these songs on my own” Robert Smith’s delicate state of mind is explored and expressed on every track, with some particular favourites being ‘Plainsong’ and ‘Pictures of You’. In fact, ‘Landscapes’ is likely too bright an expression the Cure were digging wells on Disintegration and were happy to throw us all down there in a bucket.
The band use the 12 tracks of the album to create landscapes that feel moodier and more menacing than ever before. to follow the money trail to the middle of the road obliteration. A series of pop records that charted well and saw some commercial success could easily have swayed Robert Smith et al. They had emerged from punk as one of the artistic new auteurs of alternative rock music, and their sound had even gone as far as to develop the group into pop stars. The Cure had, by 1989, a serious career under their belts. It means doing something like ranking their studio albums from worst to best puts us squarely in the firing line of their fanbase, ready for a roasting - wish us luck. It’s a juxtaposing combination that has made The Cure quite possibly the ultimate cult band. The group have developed a trademark sound that continues to play tricks on itself, forever masking the dark and morose within candy-pop flavours, while sugar is drenched in the sweat and tears of gloomy goth rock. That said, The Cure are a lot more than goth poster boys. Hell, they can even stake a claim to have invented an entire genre. It has left the band as one of the most pivotal groups of Britain’s illustrious rock ‘n’ roll past. Having formed in the late seventies as part of the post-punk explosion, the band’s sound has evolved from their more vicious roots into something moodier, gloomier and altogether brighter. The Cure are, undoubtedly, one of the most unique bands to have emerged from the creativity pool of the eighties.
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