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| Disintegration | 
 enlarge | Artist: The Cure
Label: Elektra / Wea
Category: Music
List Price: $18.98
Buy Used: $3.72
You Save: $15.26 (80%)
New (40) Used (40) Collectible (4) from $3.72
Avg. Customer Rating:  304 reviews
Sales Rank: 1944
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.8 x 0.5
MPN: 60855
UPC: 075596085526
EAN: 0075596085526
ASIN: B000002H70
Release Date: May 1, 1989
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Blossomization. February 28, 2000
12 out of 16 found this review helpful
Until 1989's Disintegration, The Cure had always been underground music. This cd is an epic somber masterpiece. Sonically, I can't think of another band that has achieved what Robert Smith did with this recording. It's long, very long, but on rainy days, this is the one to listen to. I pick Disintegration of all the Cure's albums because there isn't anyone who likes the Cure that doesn't already know that this is a great album. I like all of the Cures' recordings, and I could have easily reviewed Faith, Pornography or The Head on the Door, but none of those comes close to this one. If you're not a Cure fan then get this one. The hits "Fascination Street", "Love Song" and "Pictures of You" are here as well as 9 other Cure classics. Now that Robert has decided to disband the Cure, they will go down in music history like Depeche Mode, Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits will/have.
Inspired, transcendental, poignant, sublime. September 17, 2001
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
I can still remember the first time I heard this album. The day it hit the shelves, I borrowed the disk from a friend and sampled it while on break. Like no other album before or since, the brilliance of this work immediately overwhelmed me. I listened to the first 30-45 seconds of each song, track by track, through the whole disk. I kept waiting for weak songs to skip over, but they never came...
I bought a copy for myself immediately after work and listened to it in it's entirety, twice, that very night.
To this day, so many years later, Disintegration remains one of my favorite albums. It is pure, raw, distilled emotion set in an environment that encompasses such a depth and breadth of feeling that you could lose yourself there. For a time.
For me, this is the Cure's Magnum Opus. If you don't own it, get it.
If you have it, go listen to it again.
If you listened to it and don't like it, try again. You didn't hear it first time around.
From 1989: an ambitious closer for the decade April 16, 2003
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Ambitious, emotional, utterly brilliant; those are just a few adjectives to describe this Cure masterpiece from 1989. The aura is evident right away on "Plainsong," from the ethereal sound to the echoey vocals, to the way it seems to take the album a while to get going, this is one special piece of music, which continues the entire way through. Robert Smith takes a long time before singing on most of these tracks, as if he's purposely hoping to lull listeners into the sound and mood he's in. The drums on most of these tracks are simply played, big and booming, '80s style, amid a whirlwind of more complex music that is consistently grandoise and sweeping.
A hopeless romantic, lead singer Smith wears his heart on his sleeve when he passionately sings. Musically, the guy is pretty boundless: The quiet guitar hooks are honest-to-God hooks that sweep you in, and the same can be said for the more important keyboard work on the album from Roger O' Donnell, which makes for an extremely catchy combination, despite the overall dark ambiance. At 73 minutes long, nothing on this album is chintzy; it doesn't skimp out on anything, and thus, listeners will get a lot out of it in more ways than one.
Not surprisingly, the dark pop radio hit "Lovesong," at three minutes, 28 seconds, is sort of an oddity on "Disintegration," as much for its short time span as its quick, get-to-the-point message. Another anamoly is the fabulous "Lullaby," a quirky tune with breathy vocals. From the fragments of an anxiety-filled dream, the song comes off as entertaining and humorous, especially given the generally somber mood of the rest of the album.
The meat of these outstandingly created, brilliantly windy songs takes place at the dark but somehow joyous and experiment-seeking "Fascination Street." From that point on, no song is under six minutes. "Prayers for Rain" is bold but majestically hopeless and desperate-sounding; "The Same Deep Water As You" owes a debt to the Doors' lulling rain-drenched intro and outro heard on "Riders on the Storm." Actually, both songs possess the same seductively mellow vibe that slowly draws listeners in. The title track has a much more immediate effect, an apologetic urgency, a sound of admittance, shame and guilt. Its simple piano hook is repetative and beautiful, making the long song perhaps the best one on the album.
Though the final two tracks sound a bit tacked on, they're outstanding tunes, and they fill out "Disintegration" with grace, surely what Smith was going for. "Homesick" retains the spacey, atmospheric vibe of earlier songs, while "Untitled" might be the prettiest, most stripped-down tune on the entire record. Overall, this album is best heard as an entire entity -- if you have the time, that is. No doubt, if you're seeking solace on an endless windswept prairie of sounds, this is the music for you.
Haunting Perfection July 2, 2004
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
As novelists and poets may know, if your aim is to write something that will cause tears to well up in the eyes of readers, you must be crying as you write every word. The emotional power and pain in this album may very well cause a tightening in the back of an attentive listener's throat. Easily respected as a great album in the popular musical canon, this album is, quite easily, my favourite album released by a popular musical artist.
The album opens within a windswept tunnel of heartache and love, with, "Plainsong" musing about the morbid beauty in a girl whose candle of life has been blown out, and who embraces with love and smiles at the thought of her death and emotional drowning. This beggining track segues into the single, "Pictures of You," of equally depressing substance, as we are reminded memories are the only permanence with the passing of time. "Closedown" is a poignant track in which Robert Smith wails in painful desire to feel love that isn't frought with human vice. "Lovesong" needs no formal introduction, being one of the most successful Cure singles worldwide. I attribute the success of this eerily touching, and appropriately named track, to its simplicity. It is Robert Smith's way of simply and directly saying, "I love you". "Last Dance" is a track about the waning enchantment in life as it progresses and we grow older. "Lullaby" is a haunting proto-Gothic classic, singing of the infamous "candy-striped leg[ged]" spiderman coming and eating dear Robert, who feels like a fly caught in a sticky web of gloom. "Fascination Street" offers a second-to-none baseline, and some of the catchiest guitar music on the album. "Prayers for Rain" is a song of the bleakest perfection one can achieve, Robert buries you alive in a catacomb of doom and gloom with this track. "The Same Deep Water as You" has a title that is quite self-explaining; despair, love, drowning in tears, with wails loudly and sonorously echoing in a dark cave of hope. "Disintegration" is a beautiful track, poetically splattering Robert's tears of insatiable desire onto canvass of lost hope. He beautifully sings, "I miss the kiss of teachery, the shameless kiss of vanity, the soft and the black and the velvety, tight up against the side of me/ and mouth and eyes and heart all bleed and run in thickening streams of greed..." This track segues into, "Homesick," an interconnected meditation on drugs fulfilling an emptiness and subduing the heartbreaking "home"sickness: or an allusion to those things, desires, needs, we put off in our lives... opting instead to never face them with the aid of emotional dillution. The depressingly beautiful album ends in a way that feels and sounds like an upbeat, bittersweet sort of death, completing the feeling of sinking, as though in a warm dark sea, gradually embracing it, and smiling as you accept your emotional drowning.
 A Flawed Masterpiece March 18, 2005
8 out of 16 found this review helpful
This was probably the third Cure album I purchased after becoming hooked on their unique sound. Although it is regarded by many to be a classic (and I for one will defend that claim), it is flawed like every other masterpiece crafted before it. For me, the standout track is "Pictures of You", hands down. It's powerful, it raises goosebumps, and it utterly convinces you that this is as good as music will ever get til the end of time. However I'm not so crazy about "Love Song", despite the fact that it was one of their biggest hit singles. To be honest, and I know a lot of fans are going to lynch me for this, but I think that the keyboarding on "Love Song" is ultra-cheesy and downright painful to listen to (and this is strange because the keyboarding has always been great on their previous and future efforts, let alone the rest of this album). What is their darkest song? Most likely "Same Deep Water As You". If this song doesn't invoke heart-sickness in you, then you're already emotionally empty to begin with. Like I said, it's a Grade A album, and deserves to be bought, but it's not their best release. I reserve 100 percent praise for "Bloodflowers", the last installment in their famously touted gloom trilogy.
P.S. You say one little thing about Love Song and the unhelpful votes start piling up for some mystifying reason. *roll eyes*
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