“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.”― Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
Barry Gifford grew up on the hardscrabble streets of Chicago, while his family ducked him in and out of cars on seamy runs as far south as New Orleans. Gifford is the "outsider" who truly understands the draw of Southern Literature. It is not that he steadfastly gets every detail right as his Shakespearean star-cross'd lovers Sailor and Lula traverse the changing land in the '80s. It is not that Gifford fully understands how Southerners have a story for everything and adjust the timing when recounting it. It is that we consistently live inside the same reality we are trying to escape from.
As a peripatetic young musician in the '60s, Gifford was playing gigs in London. Of course, several people came over to his flat after the show. One of those was a writer/publisher who was fascinated by all the loose paper with lyrics that Gifford had lying around. With a little instruction on pauses and line breaks, those songs were shaped into poems. Gifford's power to write had been discovered and unleashed.
Gifford says that poetry taught him economy. As we are well aware from discussing poets here, word choice is everything. Whether it is moths fluttering in the small town's single street light for James Dickey, or Mary Oliver learning the fine art of observation from the school of nature, Gifford must carefully select and "tune" his prose to admire elements of life to the point of almost being carried away. For example, Sailor Ripley, fresh from nearly two years in prison dreamily remembers (but does not admit to his lover Lula Pace Fortune) that "when he was on the road gang, he had thought about Lula's eyes, swum in them as if they were great, cool, grey lakes with small violet islands in the middle." The romance of Sailor and Lula might be doomed, but Gifford will never let you know it by how he has them relearn about each other on this wild ride.
Later, as they imbibe each other, the reality of their love affair is how they share even the most salient and salacious memories. The ordinary spell of modern life in various itinerant motels that dot the dusty, rarely-used state highways of the South continues to be cast like dice. Beds. Tables. Tubs. TV, even, where Lula thinks "people look better in black and white" while regaling which classic Hollywood star had the best laugh (Susan Hayward, "I Want To Live" for the curious). This is film-noir-level romance where we need not know what the lovers are running from — only that shared memories are like a mud puddle for both of them to splash in.
In hot pursuit is Lula's mother's boyfriend, part-time private investigator Johnnie Farragut (whom Sailor hilariously refers to as "Jimmy Fatgut"). Given the task of finding and returning Lula to her dominant mother, Marietta Pace Fortune, Farragut follows his hunch that the pair will head for New Orleans. Gifford uses Farragut not necessarily for sympathy, but as an even-handed character who knows his limits and has developed an appreciation for growing old. While staking out New Orleans, Farragut savors life there as much as possible while keeping a low profile. One night at Snug Harbor, after losing money on a Braves game on TV, Gifford even gives Farragut a "dream sequence" of sorts where he writes himself into a "Twilight Zone" episodic script/short story.
The smallest blips of characters in their sphere are even treated with a magical realist hand. In the middle of the grim reality that someone is coming to get Lula from Sailor sets in, Sailor takes comfort in a story once told to him by a dirty, toothless guy hanging out in front of a convenience store. Dimwit Taylor regales Sailor in a tale of how he once played professional baseball in the South. In Birmingham, he encountered a young center fielder (who turned out to be 15) who could catch anything. So naturally Dimwit asks the kid how he does it, to which he says "I got the range and the speed to change." The kid's message is a lot of confidence for Sailor to carry with him as his love for Lula grows deeper — even as the proverbial walls close in.
LULA: You ain't gonna begin worryin' about what's bad for you at this hour, are you, sugar? I mean here you are crossin' state lines with a A-number-one certified murderer.
SAILOR: Manslaughter, honey, not murderer. Don't exaggerate.
LULA: Okay, manslaughterer, who's broke his parole and got in mind nothin' but immoral purposes far's you're concerned ... Thank the Lord. Well, you ain't let me down yet, Sailor. That's more'n I can say for the rest of the world.
—
Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
New music this week by Mik Davis at T-Bones Records
THE CURE - Songs of a Lost World [GREY BIOVINYL LP/CD+BR](Capitol)
For the first time in 16 years, Crawley's post-punk flag bearers The Cure have returned with new music. While Robert Smith has never been the most prolific in the vast scope of rock music writers, The Cure's contribution continues to gain importance every year. Founded nearly 50 years ago in spacious Sussex County just south of London, it is not hard to believe that the Romans may have trampled this ground thousands of years ago. The Cure's connection to this portion of England is hard to deny. Over the course of 14 albums, Robert Smith has emerged as the quintessential gothic/romantic songwriter. A typical Cure album (or concert) is a rollercoaster ride of emotion from the ebullient peaks of love ("Friday I'm In Love," "High") down to some soul-searching resonant lows that define crestfallen ("From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea"). It is fitting that charting the course of their lengthy career would also have you traversing some precipitous highs and center-of-the-earth lows.
Their opening salvo, "Three Imaginary Boys" (aka "Boys Don't Cry") from 1979 miraculously sidesteps the angularness of post-punk to skirt into pop. That is not to say that the vicissitudes of "10:15 Saturday Night" or the hidden scream on "Subway Song" are not there for mild shock value. It is that these are necessarily the doors of punk's social acceptance closing because of Thatcher's ascendancy. This existential journey ("Killing An Arab" borrows from Albert Camus) is righteous anger directed at modern life ("Grinding Halt") as well as numerous mirrors ("So What").
Whatever happened in The Cure's offseason (touring with Siouxsie and The Banshees, whom Smith would later join temporarily), the classic lineup of Smith, Simon Gallup, and Lol Tolhurst, plus keyboardist Matthieu Hartley, would create a three-album series that still stuns with its neo-psychedelic/post-punk gloom. If the nervy reflection of "Three Imaginary Boys" smashed the mirrors above, 1980's "Seventeen Seconds" begins the descent with a magisterial dose of minimalism that one would never associate with a young band on their second album. "A Reflection" chillingly opens the album before The Cure perfects their synth-pop gallop ("Play For Today") and the guitar-based melodic doom ("M") that will follow them for the rest of their years. The powerful structure of "A Forest" shifting from empty wash to bass-driven darkness even gave them their first chart hit. They would repeat this feat with "Primary," the lead single to 1981's "Faith," an album that, minus Hartley, saw the three hit new highs in gloomy post-punk ("The Holy Hour") and haunted pop ("Other Voices" as well as "All Cats Are Grey," which becomes the unknowing thematic basis for the bonus "Carnage Visors"). By 1982, it all proved too much for the trio and they showed it on the desperate hallucinations that feather the frightening "Pornography." Like Joy Division's "Closer," "Pornography" is the remainder of a band on the verge of collapse. Every song (especially the ones with drum programming like the opener "One Hundred Years") starts like it is the beginning of the end. As it violently lumbers along on the near-tribal drums ("The Figurehead" and their second hit "The Hanging Garden") it cracks with majestic synths ("Cold" predates the "big chord" use that you can still hear on the "Plainsong"-like new single "Alone") falling apart on the messy squall of the title track.
The overwhelming drama was too much for Simon Gallup, who departed, leaving Smith and Tolhurst to redefine The Cure as a duo. Finding unexpected success as a singles band (the spritely but slightly sinister "Let's Go To Bed"), Smith and Tolhurst began to discover all of the spaces between bright light and horrible darkness (the "Faith"-era single only "Charlotte Sometimes") is a textbook example. 1984's "The Top" is their transition, with Smith returning from a tiring but inspiring stint in Siouxsie and The Banshees. Like "Pornography," Smith is pushing himself toward the edge. However, with Tolhurst and a studio band, the elements shake out ("Shake Dog Shake," which they still play on tour) into vastly different yet incongruous shapes (the blazing optimism of "The Caterpillar" and the dangerous fall-apart-at-any-minute title cut closer).
In 1985, Simon Gallup returned and a newly-inspired band found themselves with a significant interest in the States thanks to college radio. With four albums landing on the outer orbit of the Billboard charts and a pair of videos that made it to MTV, "The Head On The Door" is the first conscious effort to make a pop record in years. It stands as their most balanced attack ever. The opener "In Between Days" combined Smith's bright, bouncy music and his specialty, romantic period-based lyrics of wanting. To a new generation of listeners, the switching between uptempo (the Flamenco-infected "The Blood") and booming gloomy instrumental (the closer "Sinking") was analogous to the whims of everyday life pulling you in every emotional direction. The years of MTV and even the carefully metered soundtracks of John Hughes films further insulated the use of this sine-wave effect of teenage angst. "Close To Me" should have been a smash single. "A Night Like This" should have been a prom song. While "The Head On The Door" never landed a song on the charts, it did hit #59 and went gold.
Now mentioned in the same sentences with other college radio-to-pop/rock chart successes R.E.M. and U2, The Cure opened a new campaign for stateside success with 1987's vast double-album "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me." At their most bleakly romantic, "Kiss Me" opens with a "Pornography"-style angry swell from "The Kiss" before drifting into the string-driven pure pop of "Catch." From here, the swoops and dives become more evident as The Cure was no longer trying to hit new depths or peaks, but mine the space between. "Torture" starts with a long instrumental passage (much like the new album's nearly two-minute intro before "Alone") that stirs up real tension for Smith's vocals. "Kiss Me" was a complete refinement of their previous effort that staunchly refused to isolate their hits (the joyous "Why Can't I Be You?" — their first Pop chart hit thanks to Top 40 playing it solely at night) from deep experimentation, and "Just Like Heaven," which actually hit #40. Like "The Head On The Door," "Kiss Me" remains a classic for all of those mapping out their feelings about themselves changing in the gaze of the future possibly significant others.
With a sterling reputation for a blistering live show, The Cure began to see the problems seep back into the band. 1989's "Disintegration" took two years to write and record, and saw Lol Tolhurst as the next original member to depart. Smith, engaged to be married to Mary Poole, felt trapped by their newfound success. So "Disintegration" saw him dip into psychedelics and write about how upside down he felt about the process of creation. If "Kiss Me" was a mammoth double album that took in the highs and lows of past ten years of being The Cure, "Disintegration" made them the standard bearer for newly-minted alternative music. Unlike the early '80s trio of depressing albums, "Disintegration" needed to use all available space. It is the first Cure album that plays nearly wall-to-wall with smart arrangement and orchestration. "Prayers For Rain," the piano ballad "Homesick," and the romantic wash of "Last Dance" take all available time to develop. While the thunderous "Closedown" (which on an earlier album might have seemed ponderous) is backlit by the synths. No Cure song ever best illustrates their sheer majesty as the symphonic suite-like opener "Plainsong." Being tired has never seemed so thrilling. With "Disintegration," Smith and The Cure had unknowingly created a record that found a hit in spartan (but danceable) gloom with the #2 smash "Lovesong" and a new direction in their sound with the massive rock-based riffing-mixed-with-chorused-guitars on "Fascination Street." "Disintegration" was a worldwide critical and commercial success that redefined the rest of their career in their trajectory.
At the moment, the pair of pre-releases from the eight songs on "Songs Of A Lost World" mostly reflect The Cure circa "Disintegration." "A Fragile Thing" twinkles on its "Homesick"-like piano part and skates along on a "Fascination Street"-style driving drum part. While the epic "Alone" rolls in shining as brightly as "Plainsong" with some of Smith's best lyrics in years. Just like The Cure of old, when Smith makes you wait for the first line and then delivers the massive opening line "This is the end of every song that we sing" — there is not only no turning back, but no denial that The Cure richly deserve the growing swell of fame, respect and honor for their continuing contribution. Even if this is their swan song (or the first chapter in it), it is as elegant and unexpected-yet-familiar as they have long been.
