No one ever managed to nail aimless suburban alienation quite like the Cure, so sensitive yet so party-hearty, and 4:13 Dream, their thirteenth studio album and first in four years, lands in a musical landscape infested with their descendents. Yet Robert Smith and his old blokes can still show the young shavers how it’s done, even as they enter their fourth decade as a working band. The wistful yet ominous opener, "Underneath the Stars," seems to slip towards Pink Floyd’s "Wish You Were Here," making for a perfect exemplar of the Cure’s highly nuanced, yet undeniably commercial, English art-rock. "The Only One" seems to rework their own, twenty-year-old classic, "Just Like Heaven," while the febrile scratchy funk of "Switch" sounds peculiarly contemporary right now. Their woozy "Sirensong" simply refuses to settle into predictablility, and even the lumbering and gloomy "The Real Snow White" sounds ready for arenas rather than confined spaces. Enjoyable throughout and often effortlessly commercial, 4:13 Dream should depress and impress many young people, especially some musicians who may now realise just how far they have to go to catch up.
--Steve Jelbert
2008 release, the 13th studio longplayer from the legendary Goth rockers led by Robert Smith. Now down to a quartet (Smith, Simon Gallup, Porl Thompson and Jason Cooper), the band continue to musically evolve while dealing with subjects like relationships, the material world, politics and religion. The songs on 4:13 Dream are stripped down and 'in your face' while also sounding very much like The Cure. Includes the singles 'The Only One', 'Freakshow', 'Sleep When I'm Dead' and 'The Perfect Boy.'
Song Title:
1. Underneath The Stars
2. The Only One
3. The Reasons Why
4. Freakshow
5. Sirensong
6. The Real Snow White
7. The Hungry Ghost
8. Switch
9. The Perfect Boy
10. This. Here And Now. With You
11. Sleep When I'm Dead
12. The Scream
13. It's Over