The Cure: 4:13 Dream : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

"You've got what I want," Robert Smith sings through fat, strangling-vine guitars in "The Real Snow White," his wan chirp finally collapsing in a long, falling yowl. It is classic, inconsolable Smith — with a twist. On the verge of 50 and leading a double-guitar gnarly-glam version of the Cure, Smith sounds less like a lovesick prince in 4:13 Dream's looping-riff viscera and swallow-you-whole echo, and more like the avenging middle-aged Roger Waters on Pink Floyd's Animals. There is none of the rag-doll bounce of the Cure's late-Eighties hits. The guitar overture in "Underneath the Stars" is closer to electric Neil Young than fey gloom. There are no evident hooks in "The Scream," just dirty surge and Smith's yelping rage. His dreaming ends, of course, with the usual defeat, in "It's Over." But along the way, his fury is its own relief.