When I re-posted my twist on Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me earlier this week, I forgot Id gone through a similar exercise with 1992's Wish. As with Kiss Me, many fans responded more strongly to Wishs B-sides than certain album tracks.
The main problem was the incredibly strong High maxi-single, released in advance of the record. Between the slipcase versions crashing mix of Open and the nonpareil pyschedelic bliss of This Twilight Garden and Play, hopes were out of all proportion for the forthcoming parent LP. The High EP seemed to indicate a logical progression from The Big Hand, a mysterious instrumental track that played over the end credits of the Picture Show video compilation. Many years ago, I made an extended remix of the song, which has tonight traveled all the way around the Internet and back. You can download it here, but do not expect high fidelity
Where Kiss Me suffered less from poor choices than technologyearly MIDI sequencing, weak compression algorithms and a surplus of headroomthe problem with Wish is simple: there is no treble response above 8000KHz. It is a shockingly muddy record that sounds like a superior version of itself played through a cotton helmet. The shattering crispness of This Twilight Garden and even the slipcase mix of Open made the final product all the more jarring. I considerably boosted the high end for Wished, and excited the heavier tracks (Im most proud of Doing the Unstuck and End).
Editorially, Wish is not as daunting as Kiss Me but Ive always felt Trust was facile, and never understood why the band beat their heads against Wendy Time for two or three years in different iterations. I dont hear whatever spark everyone else does, and certainly not enough ebullience to warrant pushing either of the High flipsides or Halo off the running order. Ive never published this, but revisiting it, Im really giddy hearing back my imaginary version of the Cures answer to expectation, coming off the worldwide success of Disintegration and Lovesong.
