Simultaneously more accessible and ambitious than any of the Cure's previous albums, the double album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me finds Robert Smith expanding his pop vocabulary by tentatively adding bigger guitars, the occasional horn section, lite-funk rhythms, and string sections. It's eclectic, to be sure, but it's also a mess, bouncing from idea to idea and refusing to develop some of the most intriguing detours. Even if Kiss Me doesn't quite gel, its best moments - including the deceptively bouncy "Why Can't I Be You?" and the stately "Just Like Heaven" - are remarkable and help make the album one of the group's very best.
Simultaneously more accessible and ambitious than any of the Cure's previous albums, the double album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me finds Robert Smith expanding his pop vocabulary by tentatively adding bigger guitars, the occasional horn section, lite-funk rhythms, and string sections. It's eclectic, to be sure, but it's also a mess, bouncing from idea to idea and refusing to develop some of the most intriguing detours. Even if Kiss Me doesn't quite gel, its best moments - including the deceptively bouncy "Why Can't I Be You?" and the stately "Just Like Heaven" - are remarkable and help make the album one of the group's very best.
1981's The Elder was such a bomb worldwide that Kiss' record company outside the U.S., Casablanca/Phonogram, demanded that the band immediately assemble another greatest-hits package to prove to their befuddled fans that they were still a heavy metal group, not experimental prog rockers…
As Kiss approach 40 years of ridiculously dumb rock & roll fun, it makes sense that their 20th studio album, Monster, is more self-referential than anything. Following 2009's Sonic Boom, the album marks the second set of tunes by a revamped "original" Kiss lineup, with Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons joined by new guitarist Tommy Thayer and re-emerging drummer Eric Singer donning the makeup and personas originated by Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, respectively. Dressing up these semi-random players in the classic comic book costumes is just step one in re-creating the feel of Kiss' 1970s over the top heyday.