For me, this is one of the Cure's best albums. Alongside the cacophany of Pornography and melancholy of Disintegration, I think that this is the one that best highlights the various shades of light and dark that there are in the Smith cannon. Inbetween Days is the one where Robert mastered the classy pop song (he'd perfect it with Just Like Heaven 2 years later), though the fact it's followed by the beautifully instumented Kyoto Song tells you that while he might have learned a few things since Let's Go To Bed's crassy commercialism, he didn't forget how to write something as dreamily hypnotic as Just One Kiss. It's this broad pallett that encapsulates the spirit of the whole album, taking in Spanish guitars (The Blood), twisted funk grooves (Screw), complete desolation (Sinking), adrenaline-rushing positivity (Push) and perhaps the greatest example of Robert Smith's unique somehow-melancholy-yet-somehow-uplifting-at-the-same-time brand of pop (A Night Like This). Although there are many Cure albums more rewarding than this, this is the microcosm of all that made them so special in the 80s.
And to the extra disc... the Inbetween Days demo is divine, just Robert in his flat when the riff came to him and a fascinating insight into the birth of a great popsong. Inwood and Innsbruck are demos that hark to the fact that there were a lot of dark things still going on under the surface, despite the upbeat feeling to most of the album and the relative single b-sides. Indeed, for those who do not own Join The Dots (the b-side retrospective released a few years back) there are also tentative demos of lost classics like Stop Dead, A Few Hours After This, The Exploding Boy and A man Inside My Mouth. There is also a glimpse into the experimentation of the band's sound and how much further it could have been stretched with Lime Green (and the chance to hear Robert do the best Bowie impression ever with the intro!). The live tracks are a nice touch to finish off, especially the live version of Sinking. It's the sound of a band on a threshold, on top form and about to take on the world, and just maybe win...