Shop Ireland

Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me by: The Cure

More Product Details...

Review Pages: 1 2 3 Next »

Click here to add a review!

Average rating -

Rating: - Just like Heaven for fans of The Cure

Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me is one of my favorite Cure albums. It’s packed with great music and has a discernible atmosphere that distinguishes it from most other alternative music. The Cure was a big part of my teenaged years, and this music sounds as good today as it did back then. Just Like Heaven and Hot Hot Hot!!! are the two tracks most likely to be familiar to the uninitiated, the first song catching the group at one of their more mainstream (yet unique) moments and the latter proving that The Cure could appeal to a wider audience while remaining perfectly and distinctively themselves. My nod for best song on the album, though, would go to Why Can’t I Be You? which is actually quite upbeat and danceable (if you’re so inclined). This song is one of several that deliver a virtual cacophony of sound, including prominent horns against the familiar background sounds of the band. Catch, How Beautiful You Are, and The Perfect Girl have an infectious, ditty-like quality to them, breaking the music free from the clinging maudlin environment one expects to find front man Robert Smith in much of the time. Of course, melancholia exists among these tracks as well. If Only Tonight We Could Sleep is a slow, sentimental song which sounds wonderful until you get to One More Time, which outdoes it in poignancy. And then you get to A Thousand Hours; if ever a Cure song could be called beautiful, this is the one. Robert Smith says more in a few words than most singers do over the course of an entire album. When Smith sings “For how much longer can I howl into this wind, for how much longer can I cry like this?” I find myself quite moved every time; the vocals are raw and impassioned and seem to incorporate so much anxiety and angst into them that the overall effect is incredible. I don’t want you to think that the guys went soft on this album, though: Torture is a release of pent-up feelings, Shiver and Shake tells it like it is, and the final track Fight energizes each past, former, or future Cure addict to be who you are and who you want to be regardless of what others may think of you.

You may actually want to look for the tape rather than the CD of this particular album. While the CD is quite long, extending well over an hour, the tape contains one track not included on the CD: Hey You. It’s actually one of my favorite songs on the album, full of bounce and inspiration, even though it isn’t very long in duration. There is really more variety to be found on this album than on most other Cure releases, and I think this is the best selection with which to introduce today’s generation to the music we thirtysomethings indulged in during our youth. I would still have to name Disintegration as the group’s best album, but I really believe Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me is their most appealing offering.

Rating: - never fade away

kiss me, kiss me, kiss me is a magnificent work, swooping from atmospheric swirling guitars, to class catchy poppy cure classics, it was easy to forget in retrospect quite how many hits came of this album.
amazingly sounds as fresh and exiting as it ever did, although not short on great albums, the cure have never sounded better

Rating: - Are you telling me you don't already own this ?

This album caused quite a stir within the music media when it was released (1987). Just two years earlier The Cure had finally broken through as a major commercial act, following six years of trying their best not to, and the prospect of a double album (as was the form it's original vinyl release took) from these unexpected megastars got more than a few people quite excited.

All their expectations were fulfilled, the album containing 4 bona fide hit singles and 13 other classics, many of which could have been suitable choices for singles.

The album kicks off with The Kiss, a heavy wah-wah driven track - the full 6:17 of wild guitar (with few repeating phrases) being performed in one take by vocalist Robert Smith rather than guitarist Porl Thompson, which surprised many given Porl's reputation as the "solo" guitarist out of what was a 2-guitar line up (Smith and Thompson). After this, we move into Catch, a mediterranean style piece of pop which is acknowledged by most Cure fans as being one of their greatest singles.

The opening two tracks set the pace for the rest of the album really. The 17 songs pretty much go from rock/sort-of psychedelic to pop back to rock/sort-of psychedelic back to pop, and so on throughout the album.

This is a concept that the band employed years later for Wild Mood Swings (1996), however on that particular album it doesn't really work simply because most of the songs just aren't strong enough to carry it off.

On Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me it works brilliantly though.

Like I said, most of the songs could have been singles, and of the songs that couldn't (i.e. the rockier or sort-of psychedelic stuff) are all absolute classics as well, so there aren't any problems with mixing and matching styles. I think the main reason it works so well is because it was unexpected that they would do this, whereas with Wild Mood Swings they made quite a contrite effort to actively do the same thing, even suggesting in interviews that this was their goal.

A quick run through of the songs reveals rocky stuff such as The Kiss, Torture, All I Want, Shiver And Shake and Fight (heavily inspired by Led Zeppelin's Kashmir - blame Porl Thompson who went on to play with Page and Plant !!), the pure guitar pop of Catch, Why Can't I Be You, How Beautiful You Are, Just Like Heaven, Hot Hot Hot, The Perfect Girl, and psychedelic trancey stuff like One More Time, A Thousand Hours, The Snakepit, and the middle-eastern flavoured If Only Tonight We Could Sleep (very Kula Shaker - except about 10 years before they did it!!)

This is the album where Smith's lyrics really started to become extremely sharp and polished, and his lyrics have been some of the best in the world from this point onwards (although he sings way too much about relationships for my tastes - his subject matter is ocassionally a bit limited). His voice really started to take on a maturity in that his singing here is the best it had ever been up to this point, although he still manages to put on the weirdest interpretation of a soul singer on Hot Hot Hot (don't worry, it actually works - it's not as bad as it sounds, in fact it's quite good !)

This is an absolute classic album and at 17 songs in length (72 minutes running time) is a great value purchase that any self-respecting guitar music fan (of the indie/alternative variety of course) must have in his or her collection.

I cannot recommend this album any higher.

Rating: - An eclectic collection of Cure classics!

'Kiss Me...' was one of the three-lovely double-albums of 1987 (the others being Prince's 'Sign'o'the Times' & Husker Du's 'Warehouse (Songs & Stories)'). Must have been something they were putting in the water!

There are some moments that would sit easily on 'Pornography'- notably 'The Kiss', 'The Snakepit' & 'Shiver & Shake' (the latter about Lol Tolhurst, who would be ejected from the band the following year). There are tracks that could have fitted on 'Faith': 'A Thousand Hours' & 'One More Time' being such songs (the latter was leading to the sound of 'Disitergration'). There are poppy songs that could have fitted on 'The Head on The Door': 'The Perfect Girl',the 'A Night Like This'-sounding 'All I Want' & the seminal 'Just Like Heaven' (another take on 'In-Between Days', memorably covered by Dinosaur Jr.). There are psychedelic-moments that are better realised than those on the patchy 'The Top': 'If Only Tonight We Could Sleep' & 'Like Cockatoos'. There is chuff: 'Icing Sugar' & 'Hey You' (not included on the cd-version). Shame that b-sides like 'A Japanese Dream' & 'Snow in Summer' would be passed over!...There are moments of pop-genius, Smith & co. at the height of their powers (as good at it as XTC around this period. Forget the Beatles!): 'Catch' and 'How Beautiful You Are' being those magical-moments...We have stadium-friendly Psychedlic Furs circa 'Midnight to Midnight' style rock in the form of 'Torture' & 'Fight'. And we have the irritaing pop-songs: 'The Lovecats' re-write 'Why Can't I Be You?' (which is less charming without its Cure do Five Star video) and the 'Hot Hot Hot!!!'- which sounds like something off 'Stop Making Sense'. Whatever, despite lapses in quality this album is an eclectic blend of styles- capturing the period in which Smith would move from punky-Buzzcockian pop to doomy guitars to psychedelic madness to the best pop songs ever. Sadly, after 'Disintergration' Smith & Co. would tread water until 'Blood Flowers'. This is a great collection of songs and as good as The Beatles 'White Album', Fleetwood Mac's 'Tusk' and Todd Rundgren's 'Something?/Anything?'. And let's face it, any album with 'How Beautiful You Are' on just has to be owned!

Rating: - From gloom to bliss to gloom again

This cure album is probably the best, at showing that the cure can write songs that range from the warmth and happiness of "just like heaven, to the darkness and despair of "All I Want". This proves that the Cure, unlike what most square headed "goths" think of them, offer a large pallete of sounds and feelings.

Review Pages: 1 2 3 Next »