Finding Comfort in the Gloomy Beauty of The Cure’s <em>Disintegration</em>
When I first encountered The Cure, I was lost. I was 16 and had recently moved from Florida to Denver with my family. We were poor, which added an extra dimension of alienation as I tried to adjust to a new school. On top of that, I was grappling with the onset of what I wouldn’t realize until decades later was bipolar II disorder. The music of The Cure, equal parts menacing and cleansing, split my life in half. Before it, I was a moody wallflower who had no idea who he was. After it, I began to find myself.
, the British band’s eighth album, came out soon after I turned 17—or 30 years ago this, was a double-length affair that trafficked in psychedelia and disco. The smorgasbord of an album was The Cure’s equivalent of The Clash’s notoriously indulgent , and I adored it. echoed all the wild mood swings (to borrow the name of a Cure album that wouldn’t be released until 1996) of my emerging bipolar disorder. But was different. I bought it in May 1989, took it home, and expected the cassette to unspool with splashes of neon color and vivid emotion, as had Instead, the record wove a single mood—depressive solitude—and majestically adorned itself in it.
