Hey folks!

In case you didn’t know, this is the first semi-final match, which means the winner goes to the Big Show, the match to determine The Best Album of 1989. Listen to both albums, and choose carefully!

Today’s Best Album of 1989 match is:

#1 Pixies, DOOLITTLE

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

vs.

#4 The Cure, DISINTEGRATION

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

Apropos to today’s match, we have dueling Designated Cheerleaders! First up it’s Head Cheerleader @bsglaser.bsky.social for DOOLITTLE! Take it away, Brian!

I am not here to say DOOLITTLE is a good or great album; that's (technically) subjective stuff, and anyway it got the #1 seed so plenty of people here are already convinced. What I'm here to get to is the even more important idea that DOOLITTLE is an album that is FUN and EXCITING to listen to. These are big things, and there aren't enough records that do both.

Really, we could do the whole argument via "Debaser" and be done. That intro bassline? The way the band kicks in at tempo? The wild, unhinged vocals? In just under 3 minutes, we all want to grow, up to be, be a debaser! It sounds like being a debaser will be wild! We'll watch Bunuel films and get groovy together! It's VERY EXCITING!

But it's not just "Debaser" that stirs up the excitable boys and girls. For the next half-hour or so, the band sounds both riled up and relaxed--they totally get into the groove and make the needle skip at every opportunity. This rhythm section is built for movement, the guitars never stop spitting out surprises, and the vocals sound like smiles and sneers and gulps and guffaws and kicks and kisses and everything that is right and wrong and in-between. Pray for the man in the middle.

They kinda try pop moves ("Monkey Gone to Heaven," "La La Love You," "Here Comes Your Man") and anti-pop ("Tame," "I Bleed," "Crackity Jones"), and every one of the songs has its own internal logic that makes no sense at all. As it jumps from track to track, the whole record is FUN! It's EXCITING! I listen to a ton of music, and while I can argue that most of it is very good or even great, tbh, a lot of it isn't FUN. This is. It's great to have fun listening to a record! I wish it happened more.

So forget the interpersonal dynamics of the band, or the Pixies records that came before or after. For 39 minutes, Black Francis, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago*, and David Lovering are plugged directly into the socket, pouring blood and silver into every bit of DOOLITTLE. Have FUN! Be EXCITED! Stay all day, if you want to!

(*Disclaimer: My wife's cousin's wife's sister used to be married to Joey Santiago, so he is Cousin Joey and we are family.)

Thank you again, Brian!

Next we have @kevinalexander.bsky.social cheering for DISINTEGRATION! Take it away, Kevin!

I’ll save everyone some time: Disintegration is one of my Desert Island Discs. Some Cure fans will swear by a record like 17 Seconds. For others The Head on the Door is a hill they’re willing to die on. A chaos agent or two might even throw a vote in for Wild Mood Swings.

Me? It’s this record, and it’s not even close.

Last fall, as Sam Colt and I wrapped up or top 100 records of all time, I slotted Disintegration in at #4. Nothing has changed in the ensuing months. I’m resharing that blurb in full below:

Do kids these days still go through their “Cure phase?” Growing up, it just seemed like something you were supposed to do, even if you weren't feeling particularly miserable. There was always a bit of irony there.

Robert Smith was feeling down when recording this began. He felt pressure to follow up on the success Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me had brought, and he was disillusioned with the band’s newfound popularity. He escaped those closing walls by taking a lot of LSD. Disintegration was every bit a group effort, but the result feels like we’re on one of Smith’s trips.

This was Sam’s #38 pick, and he wrote that he “…threw on some headphones and was blown away by how big everything sounded…” I’m not sure when Sam first put this record on, but I can tell you my first impression was almost the same. Even when they wandered a bit, the band’s previous records felt (relatively) compact. This was much more sprawling. Languid in parts, haunting in others. It was—and is—a sonic kaleidoscope, “Plainsong” especially. “Fascination Street” feels like the most on-brand track on the album, and even that sounds like new ground. The title track’s riff is as good as any the band ever recorded. The shattering of a mind never sounded so catchy.

For my part, I described the record as “A masterpiece. Gorgeous, lush music from the elder statesmen of the alternative/goth/whatever world. Reach into the bag and pick whatever superlative you want; they all fit. It was a record so good that one of their best tracks from that era (“2 Late”) was relegated to being a B-side. Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me was one of the first CDs I ever bought. Growing up, I had a poster of Head on the Door in my bedroom. But if the house is on fire, this is the record I’m grabbing.”

In that same issue, I named Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On my #36 pick, which, according to Sam, was an act of war. It became the yardstick against which every one of my future picks would be compared. I feel the same way with Sam “only” rating this #38. Gaye was looking to heal a splintered world. Smith was looking to heal his splintered mind. Both wound up delivering the best work of their careers.

At any rate, I think it’s pretty clear that we both hold this record in high regard—and rightly so. It remains the band’s magnum opus. Start here if you're looking for a definitive record by The Cure.

Smith was uncomfortable with the band's newfound popularity and wound up making one of their most significant records. Disintegration also had a love letter to Smith’s wife (“Lovesong”) that became one of their biggest hits, peaking at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. That’s some next-level irony.

As for me? I’m pushing 50 and am still in my “Cure phase.”

Thank you again, Kevin!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Yesterday, #3 De La Soul, 3 FEET HIGH AND RISING defeated #11 Fugazi, 13 SONGS, 191-81-1.

Thanks for all your support during this tournament! It’s almost at an end, so I hope you enjoyed the ride!

Kent