My Favourite Albums: 'Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me'

Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, The Cure’s seventh studio album is an 18-track, 70-minute plus extravagance of pure theatre. The album that cracked America and the endlessness of international suburbia. An album that gave us excuses for a thousand hours spent on dizzy edges, beds made of flowers, daylight licking us into shape. 1987. A time when stereos were an extension of your aesthetic and were either enormous or cute and bulbous and Hubba Bubba purple.

An album recalling quiet streets bordered by creeks and bushland at dusk – spooky, dark and ethereal. A catalogue of swampy sounds and small town longing. Staring past a ragged tree line wanting something to land. A UFO. A boy. A jabberwocky. Retreating to my room. Lying flat on my back on my white, satin bedspread gazing at the ceiling when there was time for gazing lost to make believe and lands made up in my head that looked like film clips. Peak MTV - when all the songs were synonymous with the images.

Robert Smith staring out of TVs. He saw things, like us, that weren’t there. Eyeballing cameras or hiding in the shadows. Waking up and rubbing his eyes and wombling around; twisting himself into shapes in crumbling mansions, coffins lost at sea, clutching the edges of cliffs. Just Like Heaven when nothing was. The Cure were medicine like that. A soundtrack for what we already knew was coming. The end of spare time. The end of moments. The end of the world. Big bass. Soaring orchestral keyboards. Lonely lead guitars.

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