the melancholy of resistance

During exam week, my taste in music regresses back to when I first started having to take exams in 7th or 8th grade, which tended to be mostly dark ambient, The Cure, misc. noise and EBM. While writing a paper for my philosophy of language class, all I really listened to was The Cure's Wish and Show. The latter was a big favorite at the time, and, oddly enough, I heard it before the former (Show is a live concert from the tour for Wish, which is the studio record) unlike everyone else who wasn't, like 13 years old. I've come to the conclusion that Show is better than Wish While songs like "Trust" are still plenty maudlin and sappy, they're a lot less so on Show, there's more distance, like Robert Smith is reporting events, rather than suffering through them while he's singing -which makes more sense with the lyrics, anyways. Plus, all of the extra production quirks on Wish are gone, it's more just the melodies which carry the song. On the whole, it's more atmosphereic, more homogeneous, more distant....."Wendy Time" and "Friday I'm in Love" break up the overriding dourness of Wish, but to be honest, it's the gloominess which makes the record so appealing. So. Yeah. I'm d/ling the 2cd version right now on slsk.