Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

This morning we’re reveling in the latest blast of Cure re-issues. We’re especially eager to hear The Top, remastered, but today’s pick is Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. I remember picking up this album originally in the summer of ‘87. A double album of post-Standing on a Beach/Staring at the Sea glory, Kiss Me pointed to a new direction for the Cure. Expansive it definitely was.

If the Cure had done to Head on the Door what they did to Kiss Me, it could have been their best album. By that I mean that the songs on Head should have been allowed to breathe. On Head, each song seems to abruptly fade-out at the three-minute mark when most of them were just getting going. Given a six-minute treatment each like on Kiss Me, Head could have excelled. But I digress.

There were several songs that caught my attention right away. “A Thousand Hours” was reminiscent of earlier work (e.g. “One Hundred Years” off of Pornography), although similar more thematically than sonically. The song that really grabbed onto me and threw me about the room was “Why Can’t I Be You?” That’s still my favorite off of Kiss Me. And of the course the way the album starts with “The Kiss” and ends with “Fight” is very arresting.

From “The Kiss”:
Get it out get it out get it out
Get your fucking voice
Out of my head…
I never wanted this
I never wanted any of this
I wish you were dead

From “Fight”:
Sometimes there’s nothing to feel
Sometimes there’s nothing to hold
Fight fight fight!
Just push it away
Fight fight fight!
Just push it until it breaks

For some reason people really liked “Just Like Heaven.” In my opinion, it’s one of the more forgettable songs on the album. It’s a little pop confection. Dinosaur Jr’s cover version was always preferable. If you haven’t heard Dinosaur Jr’s take on Just Like Heaven, it’s well worth digging up.

One notable difference of this album from other Cure albums is the format of the songs. Most Cure songs start like other pop music with a bit of an intro and then going pretty quickly into a stanza with vocals. With a lot of songs on Kiss Me, it seems like the band plays for three or four minutes and then the vocals come in the last couple minutes of the song. Maybe it’s just really on The Kiss, but that’s my impression of the entire album.

You’ll also note that this new remastered CD has the complete 18-track album. When I purchased this album in the ’80s on vinyl, it came with 18-tracks. The CD version though until now only had 17 tracks because CDs at that time only held 74-minutes. Now with 80-minute CDs the complete album is whole once more. (The original CD was missing “Torture” — the third track.)

Oh, yeah, there’s a second disc in this remastered set of demos and other stuff not meant for public consumption. Worthless.