Despite their reputation as the figureheads of gloomy goth, The Cure had always been tonally playful. They debuted in 1979 with short, spiky, post-punk songs about boys crying and Albert Camus. They delivered a trio of devastatingly stark albums in the early ’80s—Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography—that trawled the sludge of the frontman Robert Smith’s soul. Then they went psychedelic. Then they went pop. Then they threw everything against the wall with Kiss Me. Then, like the ultimate contraction of our own universe, their Big Bang led to an entropic collapse, which they fittingly titled Disintegration.

“A protracted wallow in the misery of love unrequited or recalled in hopeless desolation” is what Britain’s Q magazine called Disintegration upon its release, adding, “Eleven years and eight studio albums into The Cure’s career and [Smith is] still playing the confused adolescent adrift in suburban heartbreak. Things could hardly be worse.” Many critics and fans were bummed by what they saw as the monochromatic sameness of Disintegration. It was as if John, Paul, George, and Ringo, immediately after the kaleidoscope of Sgt. Pepper’s, decided to release Meet the Beatles. For some, Disintegration felt like a backslide at best, a self-parody at worst; I was one of those people at first. Budding music critic that I was, I felt dumbfounded by The Cure’s regression into molasses-paced glumness. I had just spent an entire year of my life defending The Cure to anyone who would listen, trying to argue that they weren’t the cartoonish goth band everyone at my high school thought they were. And here was Smith, living up to the stereotype.

I came around, as did many other listeners. Disintegration soon became The Cure’s mainstream breakthrough, spawning a hit U.S. single in the form of “Lovesong,” an elegiac hymn to undying romance that captured the heart and imagination of the radio-listening and record-buying public at large. Initially, the song seemed to me to be too simple and direct for The Cure. A love song called “Lovesong”? Up to that point, Smith had shrouded his sentiments in literary references and lush metaphors. Now, it appeared, he was going straight for popularity’s throat.

The more I immersed myself in the album, though, the more I realized that Smith wasn’t just aiming for the mainstream by simplifying his work. He was trying to boil down The Cure’s music into primal archetypes. Done with taking an elliptical approach, Smith opted to evoke the religious awe of romance with “Plainsong,” followed directly by “Pictures of You,” a sprawl of anguished longing that employed the most basic modern symbol of memory, the photograph, as its primary vehicle. “Lullaby” was exactly as advertised, a delicate if perverse catalog of creepy imagery and dreamy weirdness. “Fascination Street” plumbed the guts of obsession and lust.