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"&lt;p&gt;Face it: british goth-popsters the Cure have been running on fumes for ten years. Still, that&amp;apos;s less than half of their life span, not bad for a band that was part of the late-Seventies post-punk fallout. The mere fact that the Cure have managed to provide the soundtrack for almost two generations of the paint-it-black set suggests that Robert Smith&amp;apos;s formula is a winner: cracked operatic vocals, shameless pop melodies and shimmering, melancholy arrangements with buried, echoey drums.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;wm:embed type=\"related\"&gt;&lt;/wm:embed&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even when the Cure were scoring Top Ten album sales, fans knew to treat them as a dance band and singles outfit. Smith is incapable of writing five bad songs in a row; even hopeless records (1992&amp;apos;s &lt;em&gt;Wish&lt;/em&gt;) sport some saving grace (&amp;quot;Friday I&amp;apos;m in Love&amp;quot;). But he can write four bad songs in a row, and Cure albums tend to leak filler like an attic spilling insulation. The latest, &lt;em&gt;Bloodflowers&lt;/em&gt;, is half dismissible droning, an unforgivable ratio considering it&amp;apos;s only nine tracks long.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bloodflowers&lt;/em&gt; continually looks to the band&amp;apos;s past. The opening number, &amp;quot;Out of This World,&amp;quot; threatens to retread 1989&amp;apos;s &amp;quot;Pictures of You&amp;quot; as a spacey farewell. But unlike its predecessor, &amp;quot;Out of This World&amp;quot; is passionless and without direction, and the Billy Joel-ish piano plinking around the corners is distracting. &amp;quot;Watching Me Fall&amp;quot; features some of Smith&amp;apos;s best lyrical fatalism (&amp;quot;The night is always young,&amp;quot; he bays) and tense cymbal work, but its multilayered arrangement sounds dated. The album&amp;apos;s soft, chewy center, five songs&amp;apos; worth, never varies in rhythm or pace and depends mostly on hard strumming for propulsion. &amp;quot;Where the Birds Always Sing&amp;quot; has no tune at all, just traces of one you&amp;apos;ve heard before (in &amp;quot;Why Can&amp;apos;t I Be You&amp;quot;). Only &amp;quot;39&amp;quot; has the incendiary grandness of the old Cure, with berserk guitar lines and drumbeats resounding from a bottomless pit. But Smith sings his own epitaph in his haunted voice: &amp;quot;The fire is almost out.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/bloodflowers-20000302>