There are only a handful of “modern” bands out there that achieved their success on such a massive but also long-term scale that with each new album they released, they were able to please their core fan base while always bringing new listeners into the fold. A few spring to mind, but not a ton: R.E.M., U2, Radiohead, Blur, The Dismemberment Plan, Death Cab For Cutie, and to a lesser extent Nada Surf (don’t snicker–they’ve done some pretty amazing things since ‘Popular’). Another of these bands would definitely be The Cure.
For every album they’ve released, there is a distinctive segment of their fan base that owes their fandom to that particular album; there are people that love the more truly “gothic” stylings of Faith, Seventeen Seconds, and Pornography, while others prefer the exploratory pop of The Head on the Door, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Disintegration, and Wild Mood Swings. For me, though, it doesn’t get any better than the unabashed straight-up guitar-pop of 1992’s Wish. Back during the apex of my Cure fanaticism (oh, eleventh grade!), I read an interesting review of the album which posited that while Disintegration was singer Robert Smith’s ode to the band’s male fans, Wish was (I’m paraphrasing here) “an open love letter to the band’s female audience.” What does that say about me? Nothing more than that I’m a well-balanced individual, I hope. But anyway, I’m not sure if I entirely agree with the assessment. I like to think of the two albums as bookends of a 4-5 year period, with Disintegration representing Smith’s stretching of his pop-craft to the breaking point within the context of a coherent thematic song cycle. Wish bookends this period by offering the same focus and purpose of Disintegration, but with tighter precision. Track lengths are shorter, melodies are brighter, and the production is less ethereal and murky. This poppy single-mindedness was so inspiring that it spilled over into the era’s outtakes and b-sides, of which ‘Halo’ is possibly the most impressive.
A classic example of “a B that shoulda been an A”, ‘Halo’ first appeared on the single for ‘Friday I’m In Love’. There’s an effortless joy to this song, from the simplicity of the lyrical sentiment equating a love interest with a member of the Heavenly host to the interwoven, layered instrumental melodies throughout. Personally, as much as I love ‘Friday I’m In Love’, ‘Halo’ stands up the most to repeated listens and probably should have at least made it onto the album, if not been selected for a single A-side.
