The Twilight Sad / Robert Smith - It Never Was the Same/There's a Girl in the Corner
- by Rob Taylor Release Date:2015-06-16 Label: Fat Cat Records
To legions of self-important, overweening and narcissistic teenagers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, of which I admit, I was one, The Cure was one of the bands providing the soundtrack to our disillusionment.
Here, Robert Smith covers The Twilight Sad’s ‘There’s a Girl in the Corner’ from Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave. Smith’s voice is in pristine condition. He sings the lyric "She’s not coming back" as an ominous premonition, but as the narrative progresses, his vocal charges up, and that very same lyric sounds more like the reinforcement of a dark truth. Astonishingly, Smith is able to vary the emotional landscape of the track without histrionics.
In 2015, he may look like my sick granny, or the ageing understudy in a theatre production of Edward Scissorhands, but Smith’s vocal acuity is flawless. The way his voice opens out into a characteristic wail at 2:35 is profoundly moving and disturbing in equal measure. An emphatic success.
Flip over to dual A-sid,e ‘It Never Was the Same’ by The Twilight Sad, for an eerie but resplendent melancholy, descending over this lovely track like a blanket of fog over a beautiful mountain vista. James Graham’s voice is recorded so as to allow resonance and space. The track’s culminating twin lyric - "We’re fallin’/ we’re fallin’/ we fall apart" and "We tried to save them all" - counteracts hope with anguish, and should make us all feel maudlin, but it’s so beautiful and anthemic, you reach for the candles instead.
It's fitting that on this special FatCat Records release, both Smith and Graham are such masters at conveying a rich thread of emotion.
