Wish
| The Cure
Wish
Wish is the ninth studio album by British alternative rock band The Cure, released on 21 April 1992 through record label Fiction in the UK and Elektra in the US. The record is the final studio album featuring Boris Williams and the first featuring Perry Bamonte, as well as being the last album featuring Porl Thompson for sixteen years. Whilst retaining their trademark gothic rock sound and mood on some tracks, Wish often found the band emphasizing the lighter, broader guitar-driven alternative rock direction that was hinted on their previous three records.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Rolling Stone
April 21, 1992. . . . Wish seeks to offset the Cure’s famous mopeyness with some joy. Happiness — that’s always been somewhere in the Cure’s dire music, in the band’s long-standing commitment to exploration and play. . . . For its cult of millions, the Cure offers the only kind of optimism that makes sense.
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SPIN
April 21, 2017. This review of the Cure’s Wish—released on April 21, 1992—originally ran in the May 1992 issue of Spin. . . . Wish doesn’t resonate beyond its own limited atmosphere. Robert Smith isn’t lazy, but he’s extremely conservative. The boy needs some fresh air. Or a kick in the behind. Whatever it takes to shake him up.
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Something Else! Reviews
April 22, 2015. Almost every track on Wish had a guitar for its spine. That’s helped this album age surprisingly well. Where Disintegration shimmered, Wish screeched — and that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing anymore.
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Opus Zine
May 27, 2018. Musically, Wish found The Cure building on the densely layered sound that they’d realized to perfection on Disintegration (their finest album, of course) with added influence from shoegazers like My Bloody Valentine. Put simply, no album feels more like high school to me, for better or worse, than Wish.
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PopMatters
March 27, 2016. Wish is the Cure at their commercial apex, their stadium rock era. All of the parts that make the Cure tick are here.
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AllMusic
On the surface, Wish sounds happier than Disintegration, and the sunny British Invasion hooks of the hit single "Friday I'm in Love" certainly seem to indicate that the record is a brighter affair than its predecessor. Dig a little deeper and the album reveals itself to be just as tortured, and perhaps more despairing.
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PULUCHE
September 27, 2012. Despite a series of great albums and singles since, Wish will be remembered as the last Cure album that not only featured their last true international hit, “Friday, I’m In Love,” but also their last recording with the classic line up of the ubiquitous Robert Smith, bassist Simon Gallup, drummer Boris Williams, guitarist Porl Thompson, and keyboardist Perry Bamonte.
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Albumism
Aril 20, 2017. . . . The Cure’s ninth studio album is remarkable in its own right. It’s rowdier, headier, and just rearing to rock.
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Smells Like Infinite Sadness
Apri 19, 2017. Wish (which turns 25 April 21st) was a more varied album than Disintegration, and saw the band embracing both the light and dark elements of their sound in a way that recalled their 1987 double-album effort Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, but in a more concise package.
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Music Fan Clubs
. . . lyrically, Wish is much softer than previous albums. Gone are the vivid, twisted, sexual images; and the shock-value statements about life and death have left with them. Nine of the 12 songs on Wish are about relationships, generally the end of relationships. Meanings are too often straightforward.
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Cryptic Rock
December 4, 2017. To the eternal miserablist, Wish might glow in comparison with the gloomy quadrumvirate of Faith, Pornography, Disintegration, and Bloodflowers. However, to any fan who shares the manic-depressive eccentricity of The Cure’s eyelined, red-lipped, and nest-haired frontman, Wish remains one of the enduring band’s quartet of commercially successful happy-sad oeuvres, . . . .
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Ultimate Classic Rock
December 14, 2018. Probably the most consistently joyful album the group has ever made.
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Prindle Record Reviews
. . . the wide majority of the songs-by-songs are pretty gantastic, if you axe me. Rob . . . is still crankin' out the charmers, regardless of what all them fair weather friends who turned up their noses at the dippy single "High" might try to tell ye. Mostly sad and lovely, with touches of optimism gracing the lyrical scope every now and later, mmmm, delightful fruity candy!
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George Starostin's Reviews
The worst thing that can be said about this album is that it follows the formula of Disintegration a bit too closely - to the extent that it's pretty dang hard to write an extended review of it after already having spent so much blood, sweat, and tears on its predecessor. And yet it friggin' well deserves an extended review.
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Stereogum
In the end, Wish is merely quietly brilliant in comparison to the records yet to be named on this list: an under-appreciated classic worth revisiting.
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Adrian's Album Reviews
November 23, 2008. . . . most of the actual songs here are absolutely fine. One or two slight mis-steps, but nothing you'd hang anybody for. A solid album with a few highlights, a few lesser lights and a good solid inbetween. It's just not a particularly interesting album, that's all.
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Imagine Now Music Reviews
June 11, 2018. This album is an ode to love, to a sick and crazy love, to love which is an explosive mix of sex, drugs, alcoholism, psychophysical addiction to another person, lies, and despair but nonetheless hope (Wish that this love can exist).
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Fading Music
September 18, 2017. From hopelessly in love, to wish impossible things and letting go, Wish is in itself the cure for a real broken heart and an incredibly emotional and powerful album by The Cure.
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Hard Rock
April 21, 2017. The more I listen to this album now, the more I wish I had fully embraced it in 1991. From the droning atmosphere of “Apart” to the off-kilter pop of “Wendy Time”, everything The Cure does well is done very well on Wish.
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Robert Christgau
In any case, let it be noted that these new wave survivors, a specialized taste of undiscriminating undergraduates for years, have just now scored their biggest album ever, a redolent 13 years after they didn't actually kill that Arab.
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https://luxatenea.com/2019/02/20/the-cure-wish/
February 20, 2019. It is an album that, from the moment of its appearance, created a very controversial current of opinion due to the light, the joy and the apparent happiness that radiated some of the compositions included in this new work . . . .
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