The Fifth Desk · Canonical Evaluation
Act I · The Map
The Cure · produced by David M. Allen and Robert Smith · Fiction · 72 minutes
Mode
Gothic and post-punk darkness made widescreen; the wall of sound as the subject’s weather
Mythos
The passing of youth as a drowning — water rising from the sky to a shared sea
Phase
Twelve tracks that lengthen as they go; three short songs at the centre, then a descent of long ones to an untitled close
Presentation
Album; twelve tracks on compact disc, about seventy-two minutes, ten of them on the vinyl LP
Register
Keyboard washes, chorused guitars and six-string bass; melancholy, dread and tenderness, with panic once
Scale
One person, one room, one age
Governing Proposition
A band at the height of its success answers with seventy-two minutes of long, slow, mostly dark music in which a voice arrives late inside a wall of sound it does not command, and makes the lateness the meaning: the love that makes a self whole is the thing it dissolves into, and the record holds the listener inside the dissolving.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens with wind chimes, and then a wall: synthesised strings, guitars and drums, held very loud and very slow. The voice comes only after a minute or more, small, inside a sound it did not make and cannot command. What it says, in paraphrase, is that the weather feels like the end of the world, that it is as cold as death, and that someone is smiling. That is the whole method in five minutes: a self arriving in its weather and losing to it. By the time the voice arrives, the listener has already been given over to the weather.
The wall is the making. The album was recorded at Hookend Recording Studios in Checkendon, Oxfordshire, in late 1988 and early 1989, and produced by David M. Allen and Robert Smith. Smith sings and plays guitar, keyboards and six-string bass; Simon Gallup plays bass, Porl Thompson guitar, Boris Williams drums and Roger O’Donnell keyboards. The mix lets many parts sound as one mass without turning to mud, and Williams holds the slow tempos without letting them drag. None of this is decoration. The mass is the subject’s weather, and the voice is heard against it, not above it.
Long introductions are the rule. In “Plainsong”, “Pictures of You” and “The Same Deep Water as You” the voice waits a minute or more before it enters. The tracks lengthen as the album goes: the first six run about twenty-nine minutes, the last six about forty-two and a half, and the six tracks of six minutes or more hold about three-fifths of the whole. Recast as ten three-minute songs, the record would keep its words and lose what it knows. Its knowledge is in the waiting.
Movement II
The second track runs over seven minutes and rises by beauty, its long introduction lifting into a chorus that does not resolve. Its subject is a grief that is easy to name and hard to state: grief for a person still present. The singer has looked so long at the pictures that the image has replaced the one it shows, until he can almost believe the pictures are the person. It is a real condition, and the song says it plainly. “Closedown”, which follows, rises by mass alone, as if the wall had absorbed what the song had just said.
The plainness is a choice. The words of this album are direct by design, often to the edge of cliché, and they do not open into competing readings. What they give in exchange is a statement that can be checked against experience: the attachment that makes a self whole is the same attachment it dissolves into. The record does not develop that statement. It returns to it, from the photograph to the wedding present to the end of love, and much of what lies between is weather. But the statement is there, and it holds.
Smith turned thirty in April 1989, the month before the album appeared, and has described it as written under dread of that age. The account is the author’s, and the record does not need it, because the passing of youth is audible in the shape itself: a sequence that grows longer and slower as it goes. The band had just had its widest success, with Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me in 1987 and its brightest singles. This was the answer.
Movement III
The fourth track is three and a half minutes of plain devotion. Paraphrased, it says that love is what makes the singer feel at home, and whole again. By Smith’s account it was a wedding present to Mary Poole, whom he married in 1988. Gallup’s bass carries the melody. It reached No. 2 on the American Billboard Hot 100, the band’s highest placing there. It is placed fourth, after two long tracks of loss, so that everything after it is measured against what it states.
Around it the album keeps its other short songs. “Lullaby” is whispered over a nursery rhythm, and builds the record’s strongest single figure: a spiderman who comes at nightfall to eat the singer, a nursery terror made adult. It reached No. 5 in Britain, the band’s highest singles placing there. “Fascination Street” is carried by Gallup’s bass. Between “Lovesong” and “Lullaby”, “Last Dance” returns to the regret of “Pictures of You” at lower pressure, and it is the one place where the sequence slackens.
These songs do not rise as the long tracks rise. They keep the ordinary single’s form, and the album contains them rather than transforms them; what it gives them is placement, as air in the one place the record needs it. The vinyl LP carried ten tracks, without “Last Dance” and “Homesick”, and remained recognisably the album. The compact disc’s twelve, kept on every reissue, are the work. The album reached No. 3 in Britain. A long, slow, sad record from a band at its peak was rewarded.
Movement IV
After “Fascination Street” everything is long and slow. “Prayers for Rain” is a dreadful height, slow and airless, its title a plea for the weather the first track feared. The album has stopped offering air. From here to the end each track is a stage of one descent, and none could be moved forward without breaking the order in which the self goes under.
“The Same Deep Water as You” opens with rain and thunder and runs over nine minutes. It holds one mood for the whole of that time and earns it by not breaking it. Its title makes two lovers share one sea. Here the water that has run through the album reaches its fullest form: from the world-ending weather of “Plainsong”, through the plea of “Prayers for Rain”, to a drowning that two people undergo together, with the rain put on the recording itself. The image moves across the sequence, though it stops before the end.
The shape of the descent is old: the passing of youth, and a farewell that is also a drowning. The album surrounds the listener with it more than it builds it. The path is old too. Faith in 1981 and Pornography in 1982 had already made long, slow, dark records, and Smith has paired this one with Pornography himself; in 1988 and 1989 other British guitar bands were moving into walls of reverberant sound. What was new was the scale, and the lushness, and the moment: the band staked its widest audience on a return to its darkest ground.
Movement V
The title track is fast and frantic in a way nothing else here is. It gives the end of love from inside, as a self coming apart rather than a quarrel, and it ends in the admission that the singer never promised to stay. “Homesick” carries the height on. Then the closing track, which has no title, turns to the words that were never managed, and the album ends on its own failure to say. A record whose voice arrived late ends by declining to name what it has sung.
Its limits are those of its world. It is one person, in one room, at one age. Consciousness and the couple are held, time is held as youth ending, and the natural world appears only as weather and water. No labour, state, crowd or history enters, and the family beyond the couple is absent. The range runs from melancholy to dread to tenderness, with panic once and no humour. The law of the whole is never broken, and it governs a small country.
It has lasted. Thirty-seven years on it is in print, was remastered in 2010, and has been played whole on stage, at the Trilogy concerts of 2002 beside Pornography and Bloodflowers. It is still the record most often named as the band’s best. Little of its surface belongs to 1989: the keyboard strings are the period mark, and they are used as mass. Dream pop, shoegaze, alternative metal and the goth and emo revivals draw on it. The voice still arrives late, out of the same wall, and is still lost to it.
Act III · The Twelve
Twelve tracks in about seventy-two minutes, and the longest stretches are the hardest to cut. The introductions look removable and are not: the voice that arrives late out of the wall of “Plainsong” is the album’s argument, a self arriving in its weather and losing to it. The three short songs are the counterweight; without “Lovesong” the record never states what is being lost. From “Prayers for Rain” to “Untitled” each track is a stage of one descent, and none could be moved forward. The test bites once, at “Last Dance”, which repeats the regret of “Pictures of You” at lower pressure. The vinyl LP’s omission of it and “Homesick” is counted once, not as proof of an anthology.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Much of the album is mood, and mood ranks below meaning. But the meaning it does disclose is stated in plain words, and it holds. “Pictures of You” names grief for a person still present, in which the image replaces the one it shows. The title track gives the end of love from inside, as a self coming apart rather than a quarrel. “Lovesong” states plainly what is being lost. Together they say one thing: the attachment that makes the self whole is what the self dissolves into. That is a condition, not a weather, and the record puts it in words. Held below the gate because it is one private condition, returned to rather than developed.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Height and frequency are both high, and elevation comes on eight of twelve tracks. “Plainsong” opens with wind chimes, then a held wall of synthesised strings, guitars and drums, very loud and very slow, under a small, late voice. “Pictures of You” rises by beauty, “Closedown” by mass, “Prayers for Rain” by suffocating dread. “The Same Deep Water as You” holds one mood for nine minutes and earns it by not breaking it. The title track reaches panic, and “Homesick” and “Untitled” carry the height to the end. The four central songs, from “Lovesong” to “Fascination Street”, are good songs that do not rise, and they hold it from the top.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Evoked more than built, but the evocation is carried by the sequence, not left to single images. Water is the nearest thing to a structure, and it moves as the tracks lengthen: the world-ending weather of “Plainsong”, the plea of “Prayers for Rain”, then the shared drowning of “The Same Deep Water as You”, where rain and thunder put the image on the recording itself. The descent has the shape of an old pattern, the passing of youth as a farewell that is also a drowning. “Lullaby” builds one strong figure, a nursery terror made adult. The water stops before the end, and the figure stays within one song: half-built, short of the gate.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The stake was real and heavy. After its widest success and brightest singles with Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (1987), the band answered with seventy-two minutes, six tracks of six minutes or more, and a voice often held back for a minute or longer. The turn is real in scale: a dark vein that had been stark became lush and widescreen at album length. The turn is smaller than the stake. Faith (1981) and Pornography (1982) had already made long, slow, dark records, and other British guitar bands of 1988 and 1989 were moving into reverberant walls. The departure runs back along the band’s own path, scaled up.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Change the form and the album loses most of what it knows. Its subject is a self dissolving into feeling and time, and the sequence acts it out. The introductions are long; the voice enters late inside a wall it does not command; the tracks lengthen, the first six running about twenty-nine minutes and the last six about forty-two and a half, so the listener is held in the descent past comfort. As three-minute songs it would keep its words and lose its knowledge. The length is the instrument. Held from the top by the four songs from “Lovesong” to “Fascination Street”, which keep the ordinary song form and are transformed only by placement.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Evidence counts over promise, and thirty-seven years supply it. The album has stayed in print, was remastered in 2010 with its demos, has been played whole on stage from the Trilogy concerts of 2002, and has been taken up by new listeners in each generation. The formal depth is real: layered keyboards, guitars and six-string bass sound as one mass and separate on return. The kind of evidence is the limit. The return is mostly listening rather than sustained criticism, and plain words open fewer readings. The figure is scored partly as forecast: the formal yield is demonstrated, and the yield in meaning is not yet in the record.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Force and reach together. The album made the gothic and post-punk vein widescreen and lush without losing its darkness, and showed that a band at its commercial peak could release a long, slow, sad record and be rewarded, with “Lovesong” at No. 2 in America and the album at No. 3 in Britain. That reorganised one strand of rock, not the field. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: dream pop, shoegaze, alternative metal, where Deftones are often named, 1990s American alternative rock and the goth and emo revivals draw on it, and “Lovesong” was covered by 311 and Adele. Part of the reach belongs to the band, and the figure is scored partly as forecast.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Survival is demonstrated, and scored with no ceiling for the work’s age. In thirty-seven years the album has outlived the scene it came from and the production fashions of its year. It is still in print, still played whole on stage, and still the record most often named as the band’s best. Its surface is less fixed to 1989 than most rock of that year: little gated drum sound or digital sheen, and no topical reference. The keyboard string sounds are the clearest period mark, used as mass rather than novelty. The one exposure is that survival rests partly on a sound world, which taste reaches more easily than structure.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the lyrics scored elsewhere. Allen and Smith build a mix in which many keyboard, guitar and bass parts sound as one mass without turning to mud, and the mass carries meaning: it is the wall the voice arrives into. Boris Williams holds slow tempos without dragging. Simon Gallup’s bass carries the melody in “Lovesong” and “Fascination Street”. The sequencing places the near-pop songs exactly where the album needs air. The making is load-bearing on every track. The costs are small: several long tracks rest on one pattern for minutes, and the voice is sometimes buried deeper than the song needs.
Score: 9.2 / 10
One law governs the whole: love as the thing that consumes the self, in one sound world of keyboard washes, chorused guitars and six-string bass. The two most distant elements obey it. “Lullaby” is a whispered nightmare in a nursery rhythm; “The Same Deep Water as You” is a nine-minute drowning in reverberation and rain. Both have the one subject and the one timbre, and even “Lovesong”, the single statement of comfort, sits inside the same sound. Nothing strains the law. But narrowness is not coherence. The range runs from melancholy through dread to tenderness, with panic only in the title track and no humour. The law holds across a small territory.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no adjustment for the form. Two orders are held fully: consciousness, in its dissolving, and the couple, through devotion, marriage and parting. Time is held as youth ending. Other orders are glimpsed: the natural world as weather and water, childhood in “Lullaby”, the sacred only as the figure of a prayer. They are integrated, since rain, drowning and love form one image system. What holds the axis here is absence. Every public order is missing: no labour, state, crowd, media or history, and no family beyond the couple. It is the world of one person in one room at one age.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.6 / 10 — Final Average
Canonical Placement: Tier IV — Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 9.2, The Sublime and The Imperishable at 9.1. A production in which the wall of sound is the meaning, elevation on eight of twelve tracks, and thirty-seven years of survival behind a light date stamp. Below them, The Bottomless Well at 8.9.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.2 — consciousness and the couple are held, time as youth ending, and every public order is absent. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep at 8.0 and The Swerve at 8.3: the water is half-built, and the turn runs back along the band’s own path.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.5 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.7, The Made at 9.2, The Inner Law at 8.6, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 9.1 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.4, The Swerve at 8.3 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.0 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met — no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.0, against 7.5 — and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.2.
Basis · the complete album as released on compact disc, twelve tracks in sequence, about seventy-two minutes, judged from knowledge of the recording, its lyrics and its reception. Track lengths are approximate to within a few seconds. The vinyl LP, which carried ten of the twelve, the singles, the B-sides and the 2010 edition’s demos are used only as evidence. No lyric is reproduced; the words are paraphrased and the songs named.