SHAZAM

The 2010 Deluxe Edition of the Cure’s 1989 masterwork Disintegration offers a plethora of riches as it is expanded by not just one but two CDs for a whopping total of 32 tracks. Dig into the details and the deluxe Disintegration winds up seeming a little underwhelming. All the non-live B-sides -- a grand total of four (“Babble,” “Out of Mind,” “2 Late,” “Fear of Ghosts”) -- wound up on the 2004 rarities clearinghouse Join the Dots, so they’re not recycled here. Instead, all the live tracks that were used as B-sides in various territories for the album’s four singles are here, presented as the live album Entreat, which itself was released in 1991 as an easy roundup of these cuts. As an enticement for collectors, this live album is augmented by four previously unreleased cuts, so it is now an in-concert replica of Disintegration, something that is perfectly fine but doesn’t stray much from the original blueprint. The rarities disc contains the first sketches of those blueprints and they’re pretty rough indeed: instrumental home demos, band rehearsals, rough cuts with guide vocals, the kind of stuff that is archivally interesting. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi

Expanding the latent arena rock sensibilities that peppered Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me by slowing them down and stretching them to the breaking point, the Cure reached the peak of their popularity with the crawling, darkly seductive Disintegration. It's a hypnotic, mesmerizing record, comprised almost entirely of epics like the soaring, icy "Pictures of You." The handful of pop songs, like the concise and utterly charming "Love Song," don't alleviate the doom-laden atmosphere. The Cure's gloomy soundscapes have rarely sounded so alluring, however, and the songs -- from the pulsating, ominous "Fascination Street" to the eerie, string-laced "Lullaby" -- have rarely been so well-constructed and memorable. It's fitting that Disintegration was their commercial breakthrough, since, in many ways, the album is the culmination of all the musical directions the Cure were pursuing over the course of the '80s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi