Too many words devoted to Robert Smith.

Been listening to Pandora Radio at work. I never really got into Pandora Radio before: you say you like the Misfits, you're stuck listening to the post-Danzig schlock that Jerry Only put together; you say you like Bob Dylan, eventually you're listening to way too much Mason Jennings; you say you like Eric B. and Rakim and suddenly every third song is from The 18th Letter album, which could technically be quite good, but are you prepared to make that assessment when all you want is to be passively entertained while typing a memo? But anyway, it's there on the Internet, it works for the temporary-ness of a job where I'm not going to load CDs onto my computer.

The other day it came up with "Mint Car" from the Cure's 1996 album Wild Mood Swings. I imagine this is the record that most once-fans associate with the end of their career, but there was a time when you couldn't escape "Mint Car," a short eight weeks after which radio play petered out, the song disappearing altogether after a year or so, never to be a part of the culture again. I really liked this song, I even remember where I was the last time I heard it: Coelee's old house, in the little space between the living room and kitchen, must've been about 1998. I've thought about the song off and on since then, and I have to say hearing it after all this time made me really happy.

So happy, in fact, that on my way out of town to Phoenix, I swung by Amoeba and picked up the album for five bucks. Trudged west to Hollywood in rush hour traffic, trudged back east through the hour-and-a-half of idling that you must do to get out of the LA area in the early evening. It felt triumphant, the sort of inconvenient and not-worth-it detour that still reminds me that I am an adult, I can waste two hours if I want to thank you very much.

I'm embarrassed by how much I like the somewhat maligned "Mint Car." I don't understand what a mid-period Cure fan can find missing in this track. It's a great example of the manically happy Cure songs ("The sun is up! I'm so happy I could scream!") where you think Robert Smith should feel guilty about writing songs that remind people how they never ever feel this way. It's got the rest too: the guitar sounds bright, the music during the chorus picks itself right up, his voice disappears into a wheeze when he hit the vowels mid-word. He makes the kind of sounds those Sesame Street nose-honker muppets made. It's close-to-perfect if you like this version of Robert Smith, and if you can accommodate the occasional lyric about vanilla smiles and strawberry kisses.

The video is something else too. An old-West high stakes poker game, and Robert Smith wearing a sheet underneath Magic Johnson's getup from the Michael Jackson "Remember the Time" video.

As for the rest of the album, well, it's a lesser version of Wish. There's the longwinded and dirge-y opening track. There's half of a lyric in "Round & Round & Round" that seems taken directly from "Doing the Unstuck," and "Mint Car" itself ends in a rush during the last two seconds of the song, this being lifted straight out of "Friday I'm in Love." There are a bunch of songs with one-word titles. He even does that from-the-throat "I'm absolutely mad" thing where he sounds like a bootleg Louis Armstrong and/or a bootleg Moz.

There are also more singles. "The 13th" falls a little flat and sounds too deliberately Latin. I think that was the follow-up to "Mint Car," and I like it too despite its flaws. "Strange Attraction" was yet another single, but I don't remember this one as well. It's growing on me, but it sounds like a mid-tempo Paula Abdul song. Something in the drums does it. "Gone!" was a single too, but the best thing about that song is that it has an exclamation point in the title.

This post sounds really album review-ish, and I don't like that. I think I just have a lot to say about the Cure, and when is there ever occasion to talk about the Cure in 2009? Sorry Lauren.

This blog is turning into an apologies-to-Lauren blog. Because Lauren is a the faithful reader.

So, for your trouble, here are photos of Robert Smith looking like a fat and confused Alice Cooper. The last one is priceless - he looks more like a Bob than a Robert. I think he's starting to disintegrate. Get it?