The album begins with 'Open', where Smith chronicles his drinking problems to a forceful, dark backing of reverbing guitars and driving bass, reminiscent of sections of previous album 'Disintegration'. The second song 'High' is totally different, a relatively breezy pop song, however for me its one of the album's least good songs, not because its poppy, but because it lacks the killer tune that the other poppy songs have. 'Apart' is a slow, intimate and desolate number reminiscent of some of the earlier Cure recordings. Next comes the album's centrepiece, the epic 'From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea', a gothic rock track which builds and sways around turbulently.

The next three songs return to a poppier style, beginning with 'Wendy Time' with its funk-style, wah-wah guitar line. It still has a note of menace due to the threatening bass and Smith's voice. 'Doing The Unstuck' is a total catharsis, with its very un-Cure cry of 'let's get happy!'. Fortunately most of the lyrics are better than this slightly cringeworthy line. Again, however, despite very optimistic lyrics and tune, we have a threatening bassline that perhaps was influenced by Nirvana and specificially Come As You Are (which came out the year before). At one point, despite being totally different in mood, the song mimicks 'Fascination Street' from 'Disintegration', presenting its line 'Oh just burn down the house! Burn down the street' in almost the exact same fashion as Fascination Street's 'Just pull on your face! Pull on your feet!'. Its an amazing song, and a travesty it wasn't a single.

'Friday I'm In Love', perhaps the Cure's most straightforward, pop song ever - even 'Love Song' has a touch of darkness to it - goes all Green-era REM with its catchy, jangling guitar, poppy melodies and distant harmonies. Its as cheesy and catchy as ... 80s pop, and its incredible to think this came from the same band who made Pornography, but its strangely touching and really a lovely song.

'Trust' could hardly be any more different in mood. Beginning with a weeping piano line, it is lyrically simple yet enormously accomplished. Its a desolate, beautiful song that sits nicely with 'Apart', truly heartbreaking and a must for unrequited lovers everywhere. 'A Letter To Elise' seems a little too close to 'Pictures of You' for comfort, almost exactly the same in arrangement, mood and even to some extent melody. As I always thought 'Pictures of You' was a little overrated its not my idea of the greatest Cure track, but of course its still touching and its saved by another excellent lyric.

Next comes the most gothic song on the album, the vicious 'Cut'. Paced extremely quickly, its driven by one of the greatest basslines ever, stunning drums and layers of spooky guitar and keyboard effects, with Smith's anguished vocal layered on top. Its certainly an album highlight, sounding how 'A Forest' might have sounded if it had been arranged in a more complex way and given a 90s-style production. 'It's all gone! It's aaaaaallll....oww' wails Smiths over the cacophony, his voice escalating into an incredible, falsetto scream.

'To Wish Impossible Things' is another heartbroken track yearning for things past. If you're a Placebo fan, its impossible not to notice how much tracks like this one must have influenced them. Beautiful viola is layered onto it, and its absolutely devastating.

The final track, 'End' is built around a memorable guitar ostinato. It's musically similar to the opener, excellent slightly more angular and less fluid. There's excellent production on the vocal, which wavers and echoes from speaker to speaker throughout, and the central call of 'Please stop loving me! I am none of these things!' is incredibly powerful. This, along with tracks like 'From The Edge of the Deep Green Sea', appears to have formed the template for the later 'Bloodflowers' album.

Overall, this is an incredible album, frequently emotionally devastating, but occasionally with a true ray of sunshine. It sits among The Cure's absolute best as a total classic, dark and powerful, majestic and beautiful, touching, affirming music.


to wish impossible things   August 31, 2003
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

I am sure any Robert Smith worshiper--I refer to him individually here only because he, in every mannerism and lyrical nuance, is the Cure--would skoff at what I am about to write. Mostly because any serious musical enthusiast regards one--and only one--piece of work as the magnum opus of a favorite artist(The Beatles 'White' album, Pearl Jam's 'Ten' etc.)leaving all prior efforts, in retrospect, to be considered only warm-ups, and all entecedent releases falling drastically, if not unexpectedly short by comparison. I know. I know. The Cure hit their stride in the mid-eighties, reaching the creative peak of their unique mountain of cloudy melancholy with 'Disintegration' right? Well, in 1992, the Cure accomplished something of a miracle in the music business; they released a SECOND masterpiece entitled 'Wish', a dreamy weaveworld of emotive guitar pop, laced with too much sprawling conviction and ruminative honesty to be labeled 'radio friendly'--'Friday I'm in Love' notwithstanding, of course. 'Wish' runs the emotional gamut, infused with anger, nostalgia, longing, and even skip along happiness(which was unprecedented for the notoriously gloomy Cure) Each part is seperate--never redundant or plain-- yet unquestionably part of something whole. The perpetually love-sick Smith never seemed more confident in his romanticized confusion than when he bellows 'there is no one left in the world, there is only you' on the brilliantly lethargic ballad 'Trust', or more innocently childlike in the almost too-catchy-to-believe 'High'. 'Wish' undulates in a way that gets under your skin, much the way lyric-absent chill-out electronica attempts to do these days, except The Cure did it on a canvas of swirling colors without repetitive blurring, and WITH a an all too familiar voice to guide us. And that, after all, is what a great album makes, is it not? A winding road of a listening experience--a narrative fairy tale with a beginning and an end. But, boy how I wish this one hadn't...


Genius, Purrfection, Pure Mastery   July 16, 1999
 4 out of 5 found this review helpful

Wish is the album that certifies Robert Smith as a bona-fide genius; complemented with the finest Cure line-up, Wish takes the listener through an oddysey of the soul, there is passion & pain, gut wrenching desperation, humour and joy, pathos and reflection...musically and lyrically everything the Cure have been or could be, a penultimate stellar acheivement...to wish impossible things...