Wild Mood Swings: The argument for inconsistency

Wild Mood Swings announces its method in the title. This is an album of abrupt pivots: brass and Latin rhythm beside slow grief, bright singles beside songs that seem to distrust brightness itself. After the cohesion of Wish, the lack of a stable centre can feel disorienting. It can also feel honest—a band in transition refusing to disguise uncertainty as unity.

Inside the record

The strongest material is formidable. “Want” begins with gathering pressure and opens into one of Robert Smith’s great statements of insatiability. “Jupiter Crash” is delicate, observational and beautifully paced. “Treasure” and “Bare” give the closing stretch emotional weight, the latter allowing its sadness the time it needs. Elsewhere, “The 13th” and “Gone!” embrace arrangements rarely associated with The Cure. Whether those experiments charm or repel may determine a listener’s response to the album as a whole.

The problem is not variety itself—Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me thrives on it—but the transitions and occasional sense that performance is outrunning song. Still, the long-standing reputation of Wild Mood Swings as a failure obscures its craft and its willingness to risk embarrassment. A more cautious Cure album would have been neater and less interesting. This one misses in public, recovers, and sometimes finds beauty precisely because it has wandered so far from safety.