John Darko
“The worst thing that could happen to you is that you have a hit single” — Creation Records’ Alan McGee said that to Momus in the late eighties. It’s a fate that would befall The Cure a few years later. “Friday, I’m In Love”, the second single from 1992 album Wish, was a commercial success around the globe and exploded the band’s fanbase. (It still enjoys radio airplay to this day). If Disintegration had put The Cure on a path to stadium rock fame, “Friday I’m In Love” finished the job.
How would The Cure and record company Fiction reconcile the expanded fanbase with longer-standing fans? The answer came in 1993 with two live albums released in swift succession: Show would be a double album dominated by the band’s bigger singles but Paris, recorded at the 6000-capacity Zenith, would be more intimate to go heavier on deeper cuts.
The 30th-anniversary reissue of Paris hit record store shelves last week as a 2LP vinyl and a single CD. The latter ditches the original’s jewel case in favour of a flimsy paper gatefold sleeve that houses the booklet and the CD. The new version also picks up two bonus tracks – “Shake Dog Shake” as the set opener and “Hot! Hot! Hot!” as the set closer – and a slightly re-jigged track sequence.
The audio was remastered by Robert Smith and Miles Showell at Abbey Road to sound punchier and more detailed than the original release. But that extra punch and detail comes at a price: listener fatigue sets in earlier. The culprit is Smith and Showell’s (artistic) decision to add more dynamic range compression to the 2023 remaster. Measuring the original release with MAAT’s DR Offline MKII, we note an album average of DR12. Very good indeed. However, the remaster clocks in with an album average of DR9.
The 30th-anniversary edition of Paris gives us more music but in a more dynamically compressed package to leave this listener with mixed feelings.
Further information: The Cure
