Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just like audio heaven!, 15 Aug 2006
By 1987 The Cure were in their stride, combining mainstream success with critic success, thanks mainly to the 36 minute "Head on The Door" album.
"Kiss Me (x3)", an 18 song extravaganza (well over an hour in length) is an amazing collection of dark and dour, but with those killer Cure hooks.
The singles were firm and bubbly ("Just Like Heaven" may just be the greatest Cure single of all time), but digging futher tracks like "Torture" and "One More Time" are just so excellent it makes the hairs on your body stand up.
The second disc is full of the compulsory demos and "live bootleg" tracks cuz most of the other material has found it's way out on various boxsets over the years. It's still amazing to hear the germination of the final product though.
This album is highly recommended!
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Pucker up, 14 Aug 2006
This release should make a lot of people very happy. Not just because it is a very fine album but because it rectifies a glaring oversight that occurred when the album was originally released on the C.D. format, namely the omission of the track "Hey You".Apparantly it was absent for reasons of space which made no sense what so ever. There are tracks off the album far more susceptible to the chop but as this was a decision made by some record company executive with museli for brains and a platinum disc for a soul so that's no surprise.
"Kiss me Kiss Me Kiss Me" is my favourite Cure album .It sort of encapsulates their many strengths and oeuvres within its 18 tracks. There are truly great songs, a bewildering range of styles and textures and though it is often on the surface as light and breezy as daytime TV magazine show there is a constant undercurrent of darkness, despair and disaffection. It sums up their career in one rather large enjoyable bite sized listen without the relentless misery associated with some of their other works.
Of the songs on here everyone must be familiar with the wondrous "Just Like Heaven" (covered memorably by Dinosaur Jr) which is one of those effortless pop gems The Cure would churn out in between (days) and the more morose introspective material. "Catch" is as lightweight and airy as the band ever got with its breezy guitars and buoyant strings. "Why Can't I Be You" is exuberant and vivacious with a pepped up horn arrangement and glowing keyboards unlike album opener "The Kiss" which tremble with tension and pent up aggression mirroring the songs central dysfunctional violent relationship. This song is leaving a marker that despite some of the albums pop gems it is no way going to be an easy ride. "Torture" is a magnificent broiling landscape of monumental keyboards, percussion that slaps against the songs structure like a Grizzly trying to break down a cabin door. Smith's vocals are teetering on the verge of collapse. Its torture but he's almost there to paraphrase the vocals.
Showcasing the albums diversity and melange of stylistic flourishes is "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep" which integrates Eastern sounding strings whose exotic strains sit uneasily against the torpid sorrowful vocals. Contrast this with the brief concentrated "Icing Sugar", all screeching saxophones and panting vocals or the furious insistent "Shiver And Shake". "Hot Hot Hot" is an audacious and not entirely successful sidestep into funk and may have influenced the Red Hot Chili Peppers in which case I damm it to hell. "Fight" attempts epiphany via rock music and though it's central theme and message is unusually positive and assertive it smacks of a stadium filling exhortation that sits uneasily with this band who were never about grand gestures, more about personal ones. "How Beautiful You Are" is just such a moment , a song about falling out of love with perky violins, sharp stabs of brass and whirling accordions , it is one of the albums strongest tracks and should certainly have been a single ahead of tracks like "Hot Hot Hot". I love the orchestral work on "A Thousand Hours" and the acid tinged feedback of "The Snakepit" while finding "Like Cockatoos" a little too bizarre and stubbornly discordant. "The Perfect Girl" is welcome due to the twinkling motes of piano and fragrant harpsichord.
Released on vinyl as a double album it follows the path laid down by so many double albums by being an intoxicating mixture of the baffling, brilliant and sometimes just plain indulgent but "Kiss Me Kiss me Kiss Me" happily has far more of the good stuff than the extraneous nonsense. Lots more. Unusually it is credited to the whole band on a writing level which gives a tantalising hint that this was a period of harmony and mutual appreciation within the group. The extra disc is the usual mixture of alternative versions and mixes and will only be off interest to real Cure aficionados and leads to a question. Why aren't songs like "Breathe" or "A Chain Of Flowers" that were on B-sides of singles off the album included? They are extras worth having. That said this is a splendidly diverse and intoxicating album, especially in this re-mastered and fully up-dated form. Pucker up and give it a good smooching.
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10 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Deluxe reissue of 1987's double album..., 5 Aug 2006
1985's 'The Head on the Door' & the following year's 'Standing on a Beach/Staring at the Sea'-compilation began to put The Cure on the path to stadium appeal. The Smith-Tolhurst-Gallup-Thompson-Williams line-up one of the key versions of The Cure (even if Tolhurst was a poor keyboard player!) featuring four prinicpal members who would be in the band up to the best-selling 'Wish' in 1992 (following which Thompson & Williams would bow out - the former has since rejoined, which is as well as he's the best guitarist the band ever had!). Following a headlining slot at Glastonbury and the 'Cure in Orange' concert, the band relocated to the South of France to record this double album. I'm sure Smith was picturing it as The Cure's 'Electric Ladyland' or 'White Album', while Thompson nodded to 'Physical Graffiti.' Essentially 'Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me', released in Spring 1987, was an expanded take on the eclectic directions of 'The Head on the Door', an album that seemed to sum up the different ways Smith went...
As with many double albums, it suffers by having some so-so material - though fans of box-set 'Join the Dots' will note some fine songs were banished to b-sides, e.g. 'Chain of Flowers', 'A Japanese Dream.' The album would be a lot sharper without 'Icing Sugar', the 'Night Like This'-retread 'All I Want', the obvious b-side 'Hey You!!!' (which wasn't on the prior cd version), or the irritating initial single 'Why Can't I Be You???' Smith had become more democratic with the songwriting, letting other members contribute whereas Cure albums from 'Seventeen Seconds' on had been very much his vision. Then again, hard to gripe when the results of this collaboration fuelled by masses of wine created such joys as the psychedelic wonder 'If Only Tonight We Could Sleep', the otherworldly 'Like Cockatoos' (a return to the territory of 'The Top'), or the single that should have been, 'How Beautiful You Are' - a song up there with such rococo Prince-joys as 'Raspberry Beret' & 'Starfish & Coffee' (1987 to me was one centred around double albums, 'Kiss Me...' and Prince's 'Sign'O'the Times', as well as the 'Substance 1987' compilation by New Order - perhaps this accounts for my eclectic taste?). Three of the four singles here were fantastic, 'Catch' as perfect a popsong as can be, 'Hot Hot Hot!!!' a blend of Chic & Talking Heads, & 'Just Like Heaven' a sequel to 'In Between Days' that nods to Rilkean angels and would be covered by Dinosaur Jr. and Katie Melua (...fortunately not at the same time!!!).
There are a few songs that suffer by having synths of the time, notably 'Fight' and 'Torture', which make you think of such average records from 1987 such as 'Midnight to Midnight' & 'Outland.' Smith & co still managed to emit classic dream pop songs, as well as the sublime 'Catch' there is the lovely 'The Perfect Girl', while the dreamy wonder of 'Disintegration' would be predicted by 'One More Time' and 'A Thousand Hours.' To cover all bases, Smith & co nod back to the darker, earlier work of The Cure - songs like 'The Kiss', the spiteful Tolhurst-gripe 'Shiver & Shake' and the epic dirge 'The Snakepit' could have been on 1982's bleak bilefest 'Pornography.'
This album signified The Cure meant business, several peers' recent releases (The Banshees' 'Tinderbox', The Furs' 'Midnight to Midnight', The Bunnymen's eponymous letdown, New Order's 'Brotherhood', The Mary Chain's 'Darklands', PIL's 'Happy?' & The Damned's 'Anything') paled against this, only The Smiths, who would shortly split up, seemed able to keep up. To be fair, New Order returned a year or so later with the best album of their career 'Technique', but not many could hold their own with this globally conquering version of The Cure. Next stop, 1989's bleak masterpiece 'Disintegration'!!!
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