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CURE: The Cure (Geffen)
DON'T believe Robert Smith the next time he announces he's taking a sabbatical. For the Cure's self-titled Geffen debut, Smith recharges himself with an album that not only lives up to the band's sizeable legacy, but extends it even further.
The current crop of mope-meisters could learn a thing or two from both the bracingly loud and gnashing Us Or Them, the most modern- sound track on the album, and the comparatively gentle Lost, which sheathes Smith's disoriented lyrics in a lurching acoustic swirl. Obsessions with doom and gloom still loom large over songs like Labyrinth and the desperate- sounding The Promise.
But true to form, as Smith did on many of the middle-period Cure albums, Smith leavens the mood with disarmingly bouncy pop songs like the shimmering Before Three.
There's not enough sweetness here to startle long-time fans who prefer to accentuate the negative. This is the kind of cure for those who like to chill their anxiety attacks with a string of chiming notes.
* EMMA: Free Me (19 Records)
FORMER Baby Spice Emma Bunton returns to the pop frontline with a single name, a label debut, new management, new fashion attitude, and a reinvented musical style that has its roots in `60s pop.
The title track is a strong opener, but it's the follow-up track, Maybe, with its infectious cyclic chorus, that shows signs as a formidable pop single. It's a sequin-gowned showstopper that other retro-driven acts might kick themselves to cover.
The rest of the album thrives on clichd, formulaic territory, mostly because Bunton has yet to thunder on in the same tradition as other great female singers like Dusty Springfield. Crickets Sing For Anamaria, a passable salsa swing complete with whistles and percussion, strays too far from familiar territory. She redeems herself with the brassier ballad No Sign Of...