The Top [EXTRA TRACKS] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]

The Cure

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 8, 2006)
• Original Release Date: August 8, 2006
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
• Label: Elektra / Wea
• ASIN: B000GGSM7G
• Also Available in: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #85,276 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

• This item is part of The The Cure Deluxe Reissues Series.

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
First released in 1984, this album is a dramatic musical transition for The Cure, integrating the band's trademark dark textures with increased melodic and pop tendencies. The Top features 4 previously unreleased songs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Is A Psychedelic/Goth Masterpiece! -- A Note About The New Remaster . . ., August 28, 2006

By	Rich Latta (Albuquerque, NM - Land of Entitlement) - See all my reviews

Complaints that Rhino "screwed up the pressing" are flat out wrong. I queried Rhino directly about this release and "Dr. Rhino" subsequently informed me that Robert Smith himself took the opportunity to make some adjustments to certain aspects of the album he was unhappy with. The opening drum roll on "Shake Dog Shake" has been edited to meet Robert's original intentions (sounds the same to me though!) and he also intentionally sped up "Bananafishbones" by a semi-tone. The following is my original review of THE TOP, followed by some comments on the bonus disk.

This brilliant album is as colorful as its cover. It's a fascinating window into the darkly distorted state of mind that Robert Smith (the Cure's mastermind) was regularly experiencing at the time, thanks to high drug intake and an exhausting schedule recording with the Banshees during the day while working on THE TOP at night. Some of his best music and most tripped-out lyrics are featured here.

Smith plays most of the instruments on THE TOP while the talented but soon to be booted Andy Anderson plays the drums. Porl Thompson and Lol Tolhurst do contribute, but this is the closest thing to a solo album Smith has released, although I do have a bootleg solo album that Smith did by himself (it's mostly acoustic and sounds rather warm and sunny)[unfortunately, that tape was stolen]. With the JAPANESE WHISPERS singles, Robert Smith realized he could do any kind of music, and with the hallucinogenic TOP takes that notion to an extreme where he really lets it all hang out.

The breakdown:

"Shake Dog Shake" - a creepy, nightmare-ish vision with churning psychedelic guitar, death knell pacing and a grim smile. "Make up in the new blood/ And follow me to where the real fun is." *****

"Birdmad Girl" - beautiful song, lighthearted yet tinged with melancholy. Exudes an exuberant lust for life. Great piano, great guitars (both acoustic and electric). "She sends me everything/ She sends me everywhere" (love the way "me" switches from indirect object to direct object). *****

"Wailing Wall" - a fantastically gloomy Middle Eastern atmosphere pervades as Smith's electric guitar hovers in waves throughout the background. *****

"Give Me It" - full-throttle chaos and desperation, a truly harrowing vision. "Give me it, give me it give me it!/ Deaden my glassy mind!/ Give me it, give me it/ Make me blind!" ****

"Dressing Up" - a dreamy, soothing respite from the madness. Soothing woodwind keyboards, very intimate. ****1/2

"The Caterpillar" - A sweet, mildly plaintive song and quite unique. Highly creative with distinctive percussion (bongos, a clapper that flickers like butterfly wings) and other interesting touches. *****

"Piggy in the Mirror" - The surreal lyrics reflect a very warped state of mind and are simply brilliant. The acoustic guitar solo at the middle 8 is otherworldly and exquisite. ****1/2

"The Empty World" - Easily the weakest track on THE TOP, it features a military march on drums and a keyboard line that sounds like a Revolutionary War flute. It also explores THE TOP's central motif - altered mind states. ***

"Bananafishbones" - Possibly Smith's most wigged-out, warped and psychedelic song ever and the best song on THE TOP. Absolutely churning and thick like caramel with an uneasy, off-kilter heaviness that makes the room swim. "Turn off the lights/ And tell me 'bout the games you play." ***** [I loved the sound of the original recording, but Robert Smith must've thought it was too sludgey. This speeded-up version is snappier, but that "churning effect" is compromised and Smith's voice is considerably higher in pitch. At the moment, I still prefer the original version, but I'm getting used to this one.]

"The Top" - a dark, hypnotic, "place where nobody goes/ You just imagine it all." Conveys a frightening sense of isolation. Cadences from percussion waver in tone and methodic drum rolls are divided into segments that make your mind swirl until an actual spinning top comes to a stop and falls over. ****1/2

For some reason THE TOP is often misunderstood and slagged, but mostly by people who don't get the Cure anyway. Claiming the album is "incoherent" is missing the point, and calling it "disjointed" sounds ridiculous coming from people who love KISS ME KISS ME KISS ME as that particular album could be described the same way. In both cases, I'd use the word "eclectic" rather than "disjointed." THE TOP is one of my favorite albums, by the Cure or anyone else.

Disk 2

The unrelease songs on this disk are even weirder than the ones on THE TOP and some of the most interesting in this series of Cure album rereleases. The demos are actually pretty good, but mostly just show these songs in development and are inferior to the final versions. One exception is "The Caterpillar" featuring a very interesting take worth repeated listens, and the rough mixes of "Dressing Up" and "Wailing Wall" sound cool. The live bootlegs are pretty good/OK, but the live "Top" is very good. It burns slowly and sounds quite nightmare-ish. "Forever" is another highlight and sounds pretty freaky, thanks especially to Porl's wigged-out sax playing. The version found on the FAITH bonus disk is also a must-have. As usual, the whole package including an essay and rare photos is excellent.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This top is the place where nobody goes, August 15, 2006

By	A. Cook "Mr. Pink-Eye" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Top is indisputably the Cure's most bizarre (though in some respects most representative) album. Now we have this 2CD remastering of an album long unavailable in the US, at roughly the same price as the original import. The ten tracks are indulgent, noisy, and all over the map, yet the album maintains a Dark Carnival unity: the frenetic drums and demented saxaphone rant of Give Me It could not be more different from the gauzy synths of Dressing Up, but together they are a perfect heroin fix. Throw in Robert Smith's most flamboyant vocal gymastics and strange experiments like The Empty World (a fife-and-drums number on the nihilism of war) and you have an album (and a band) in the midst of a breakdown. But then that's what makes the Top such an interesting trip. Only the Cure could bring you a record so simulataneously over the top and under the weather.

A few notes on this release:

DISC ONE (Remastering):
The drum roll at the beginning of Shake Dog Shake is indeed slightly shorter--intentionally so, I believe. Bananafishbones is also noticably faster, correcting a mastering problem in the original release. The remastering gives more space to atmospheric tracks like The Wailing Wall, and brings out the brilliant percussion on the single, The Caterpillar.

DISC TWO:
As with the previous reissues, this mostly charts the development of the album tracks. Among the highlights are a demo of A Hand Inside My Mouth with lyrics from Six Different Ways (HOTD album track) and a demo called Sadacic, which eventually became New Day (b-side).

If you have read this far, then you are ready to buy it.

"Oh, I could be a polar bear,
but it's impossible...."

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nowhere near "The Top" for The Cure, August 16, 2006

By	R. C. Lanham "just another nameless consumer" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'd have to agree with one of the other reviewers of The Top in that my review is a bit biased; which is unavoidable since this album did not elicit much more of a response than a shrug of the shoulders from me when I first heard it about 20 years ago. It's the older brother of the equally unstable 1996 release Wild Mood Swings, and listening to the deluxe remaster of The Top only reinforces this for me. Both of these albums lack focus and consistency, and while they each have some flashes of near-brilliance, they never really establish a theme and/or atmosphere for the listener to grab onto.
The Top was originally released in May, 1984 and represented yet another line-up change for The Cure (already the seventh in the first six years or so of the band's life). Because of this, it suffers from a lack of clear identity and direction.
Robert Smith has claimed in past interviews that he played almost all of the instruments on The Top, in spite of the musician credits listed on the album's sleeve. If that is true, then it makes this an even more confusing effort by a supremely talented, but obviously very unsure, artist.
The Top opens with "Shake Dog Shake", which is a decent enough song, but still a sub-par introduction by a band that has mastered the art of the powerful album opener. Yes, this remastered 2006 edition has a clipped drum intro to the song, but I believe this was an intentional edit. The drum roll sort of fades in for about three seconds before the rest of the music starts. The fact that it fades in would appear to be an intentional revision and not an oversight, in my opinion.
The next two songs, "Birdmad Girl" and "Wailing Wall" are two of the stronger tracks on the album and are as close as The Top gets to representing that unique and magnificent Cure sound that we all know and love. Along with "The Caterpillar", they are the only tracks from The Top that have stood the test of time and sound just as good some two decades later. Conversely, "Give Me It", "Dressing Up", and "Bananafishbones" are some of the poorest (and perhaps laziest) efforts in the history of the band.
Because of the unclear focus and generally themeless haze of The Top, I feel comfortable in advising that only the more enthusiastic and loyal Cure fan should consider adding this one to their collection. It just does not offer very much to anyone else.
The second disc of mostly home and studio demos provides little help, and is most interesting for the previously unreleased, but none-too-special, handful of offerings. The most interesting of which is the atmospheric "Sadacic" with one of the more confident vocal tracks by Robert Smith up to that point of his singing career. The live material that closes the disc presents a nice sampling of how the band sounded on stage at the time, and the version of "Forever" is a particularly worthwhile listen with it's all-too-fitting schizophrenic climax to such a confusing album.
2.5 STARS.