The Top

by

The Cure

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This has to be the most bizarre Cure record ever, and its being inexplicably out-of-print only adds to the weirdness. It doesn't belong with the dour, slow Cure of Faith or Seventeen Seconds (too much instrumental variety), nor does it fit in with the lush, expansive Cure of Disintegration or Head on the Door (nowhere near as atmospheric). We've seen Robert Smith depressed before, but The Top is where he gets psychotic. His voice paints a picture of someone completely out of control and blind as a bat, utterly out of their mind. It's broken in pieces, and his inimitable tortured wails are at their most tortured and inimitable. Then there are the freakouts. The first time "Give Me It" came on, right after the hypnotic groove of "Wailing Wall," I practically had to jump and hide behind a chair. It is quite possibly Smith's most insanely frenetic song ever, placed and carried out somewhat like "Doubt" from Faith, except hitting a thousand times harder. And the lyrics carry Smith's most burningly bizarre imagery ever. Some songs are just surreal jumbles of these images. It rather borders on frightening.

No song on The Top sounds like any other. Thematic coherence? Nope, none of that. We start with a fevered rocker ("Shake Dog Shake"), switch gears completely for the lighter "Birdmad Girl" (great title on that one), then switch them again for the mesmerizingly hypnotic "Wailing Wall." This last one contains Smith's most "normal" singing on the album, making the next song ("Give Me It") that much freakier. From there we once again make a _complete_ about-face for the beautiful, melancholy pop of "Dressing Up" and the sad/cute "Caterpillar." What follows is the subdued weirdness of "Piggy in the Mirror," then another complete change into the military marching band tune of "The Empty World" ("stiff as toys and tall as men" is one of Smith's best lines ever), then yet another switch and more freakiness with the utterly incoherent "Bananafishbones," and finally an end with the pounding, despondent title track. The stylistic thrashing about makes for a difficult listen, but also actually serves to distinguish each song since every one of them stands out on its own. And the opaque, crazed lyrics add to the effect ("spurning sex like an animal of God"? whatever that is, it doesn't sound too happy, does it?).

It's hard to say which is the best track on the album, since they're all so different as to be incomparable. It's not an album to be played on every occasion, or even often, but for those times when you're feeling completely lost and confused, I daresay there's nothing better. Manic, paranoid and surreal, The Top is not an easy listen, but there's no other Cure album quite like it. The price is a bit steep, what with it being out of print in the States and all, but I declare it to be worth it. Purchase it today.

I'd have to agree with one of the other reviewers of The Top in that my review is a bit biased; which is unavoidable since this album did not elicit much more of a response than a shrug of the shoulders from me when I first heard it about 20 years ago. It's the older brother of the equally unstable 1996 release Wild Mood Swings, and listening to the deluxe remaster of The Top only reinforces this for me. Both of these albums lack focus and consistency, and while they each have some flashes of near-brilliance, they never really establish a theme and/or atmosphere for the listener to grab onto.

The Top was originally released in May, 1984 and represented yet another line-up change for The Cure (already the seventh in the first six years or so of the band's life). Because of this, it suffers from a lack of clear identity and direction.

Robert Smith has claimed in past interviews that he played almost all of the instruments on The Top, in spite of the musician credits listed on the album's sleeve. If that is true, then it makes this an even more confusing effort by a supremely talented, but obviously very unsure, artist.

The Top opens with "Shake Dog Shake", which is a decent enough song, but still a sub-par introduction by a band that has mastered the art of the powerful album opener. Yes, this remastered 2006 edition has a clipped drum intro to the song, but I believe this was an intentional edit. The drum roll sort of fades in for about three seconds before the rest of the music starts. The fact that it fades in would appear to be an intentional revision and not an oversight, in my opinion.

The next two songs, "Birdmad Girl" and "Wailing Wall" are two of the stronger tracks on the album and are as close as The Top gets to representing that unique and magnificent Cure sound that we all know and love. Along with "The Caterpillar", they are the only tracks from The Top that have stood the test of time and sound just as good some two decades later. Conversely, "Give Me It", "Dressing Up", and "Bananafishbones" are some of the poorest (and perhaps laziest) efforts in the history of the band.

Because of the unclear focus and generally themeless haze of The Top, I feel comfortable in advising that only the more enthusiastic and loyal Cure fan should consider adding this one to their collection. It just does not offer very much to anyone else.

The second disc of mostly home and studio demos provides little help, and is most interesting for the previously unreleased, but none-too-special, handful of offerings. The most interesting of which is the atmospheric "Sadacic" with one of the more confident vocal tracks by Robert Smith up to that point of his singing career. The live material that closes the disc presents a nice sampling of how the band sounded on stage at the time, and the version of "Forever" is a particularly worthwhile listen with it's all-too-fitting schizophrenic climax to such a confusing album.

2.5 STARS.