- Bloodflowers, 15th February 2000 -
Like with Disintegration after Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Bloodflowers was an utter surprise after a weird album like Wild Mood Swings. The years following 1996 were a downward spiral for the band; for the first time, Robert was disappointed at how the album had been received; he later admitted that in 1998 he didn’t want to go on making music with The Cure anymore. He often drank too much before going onstage (lyon 1998 is a very famous example of Drunk Robert at his best, but they removed the video from youtube so have this “Zillo ‘98” instead), but a thing that must be said is that he never, ever disappointed his public.
Anyway, thankfully Robert decided to take control of the situation once again, and what came out was Bloodflowers.
The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about this whole album is resignation and tiredness, and a bitter sense of ending. Someone defined this album “an aged Disintegration”, and I agree: you can still feel that sense of frustration and intimate sorrow, but the melodies and most of all the lyrics are somehow more delicate. The main theme here is the end of things: of relationships, strong feelings, time, inspiration. All the songs are deeply introspective, at the point that they lose touch with the outside and shelter into themselves, over and over and over, lingering over every note. That’s probably why the only track under 5 minutes is There Is No If.
And still, the length of the songs is not annoying at all. Watching Me Fall is 11 minutes long; Robert said that with that song he tried to resume his life, and eventually he even had to cut half of it. But the repetitive melody is so perfect that one just wants to hear it over and over, to find new meanings to it.
As always, the opening and closing tracks capture perfectly their “role”: Out Of This World introduces the bittersweet atmosphere that develops in many different directions through the whole album, while Bloodflowers is an evolution of that sense of frustration and resignation that we find in Disintegration, and maybe even in Pornography (the three albums, characterized by a higher level of emotional “control” by Robert, form the famous Trilogy). Once again the massive guitar riffs reflect perfectly the lyrics, picturing the normally abstract concept of disillusion. Those closing tracks that give name to the album have a special place in my heart, because they have this ability to literally paint in my mind feelings that otherwise I could never fully understand.
This is a very introspective album, very intense (Robert’s eyes on the cover say it all), focused on dealing with the concept of loss. It requires a sweetly melancholic mood to appreciate the long tracks, but if Disintegration made you understand your feelings, Bloodflowers will help you dealing with them. Even in the angry “39” (written by Robert before turning 40 in 1999) doesn’t offer solutions: that’s it, “the fire is almost out and there’s nothing left to burn”, you can’t do anything about it, just accept it, and learn to live with it. Same for Where The Birds Always Sing. And in Maybe Someday, there’s another healthy piece of advice: “if it can’t be like before, I’ve got to let it end…”. This touches me on so many levels… I always tend to idealize things, defending memories of things that are not like that anymore, and I’ve learned that doing it is only hideously self-destructive.
Bloodflowers was meant to be the last Cure album, but this closing track doesn’t seem to mark it properly. It ends weirdly, with a Robert whimper and a reverberant note that doesn’t want to vanish. Even if for Robert everything ends sooner or later, there’s still place for that “one last time” he always looks for (see Maybe Someday). Thankfully it only marked the end of another era.
(If you want to open a discussion over it, feel free to send an ask ;))
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