"Wish" as a concept album

Started by Whiskers, November 06, 2008, 09:51:23

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Whiskers

Does anybody else see Wish as a concept album? Besides the songs "High" and "Friday I'm In Love" I see it as the story of somebody in a relationship that he wants to get out of, and, by the "End," he's able to. Thoughts?

nausearockpig

as a whole, looking at the subject matter of most The Cure songs, you could argue that the band is a "concept band".. but i reckon that there's too many "happy breaks" in Wish to call it a concept album. You forgot Doing The Unstuck.. those three songs break up the sadness and anger in the other songs..tracks two, six and seven if i recall correctly..

Whiskers

Well, there's no denying that The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails is a concept album, but that album has "Big Man With A Gun," which is really just a poke at the rap industry.
And while The Cure is sometimes a "concept band" almost every song on Wish is about wishing for something to end, or wishing that something would get back to the way that it was. Combine that with the way that you can combine the song lyrics into a narrative, and it seems like a concept album to me.

splitmilk34

I'm also more keen to the idea of viewing The Cure as a concept band - which is why each album has a different sound and feeling.  You can (almost) view every album as a concept, but I don't think there was ever an intention to create Wish within a particular concept.  That being said, the band definitely seeks to create a "cohesive" album, where the songs can both stand on their own and work within the context of each other.  Furthermore, I would venture to say that the only "true" concept albums The Cure have created are Faith, Pornography, Disintegration and Bloodflowers.  There are things on each of those albums that transcends similarities in sound and lend themselves to a deeper meaning when taken as a whole piece of music. 

And a quick point about the "concept" of Bloodflowers - the album was, admittedly, created to reference both Pornography and Disintegration while weaving tales of hope, despair, loss, sadness and complacency into musical backdrops dressed in the same instrumentation from track to track.
"... sleeping less every night"

ExplicitMoment

I see The Cure more as a band who group the songs on each album around a central theme(s) which lends itself to the title, rather than a true concept album in the manner of the aforementioned NIN's Downward Spiral. Wish, Faith, Disintegration, even 4:13 Dream have tracks that share common ideas/concepts, and while it might be easy to look for a coherent narrative in the lyrics, I think that's just reaching. Taking Wish, it starts with Open, about Robert's excessive drinking, and ends with...End, which to me sounds like a plea to fans to stop treating him like some idol ("Please stop loving me, I am none of these things").

But having said all that, the beauty of music is what you read into it :)

nausearockpig

I believe Open is about more than just drinking / drugging.. Part of it is about being in places or situations or around people for the sake of expectation..