It has always perplexed me that The Cure’s most commercially successful record has been out of print on vinyl for 30 years, while the likes of Faith and 17 Seconds seem to get a new release every four or five years. Word was that the remastering of the record had been done for some time, but actually getting the whole package together was taking ages for whatever reason… unusual, since Robert Smith is usually so prompt with getting things done.
But finally, at long last, the 30th anniversary edition of Wish is complete and ready to be heard… in three more months. The digital edition – streaming and CD – will arrive on October 7 and include a newly-remastered version of the original album, a second disc of 21 demos – both instrumental and vocal, and a third disc of era-accurate bonus material including the fan club-only Lost Wishes cassette, from which the first preview track from the release is taken. The vinyl edition will only comprise the remastered album over two discs and is supposedly coming November 25.
As for Smith’s official words on the set, the official press release has the following:
The prolific period of recording Wish began with demo sessions at The Live House in Cornwall and continued at Farmyard Studios in the Cotswolds. “We got around forty songs put down during those two sessions,” recalls Robert Smith, “we were on fire!”
On arrival at The Manor, a residential studio in Oxfordshire, in September 1991, the band all bought bicycles. Robert Smith, “There was a pub down the nearby canal path, and most early evenings we’d cycle down there for a ‘livener’ or two. I was the only one ‘un-cool’ enough to have a bike with lights, so I was always at the back on the way there and always at the front on the way back… I still can’t believe we never ended up in the water.”
From the start of the recording, Smith had a clear vision of what Wish should be. “The overall sound was in my head from the start. We used a pretty small palette of sounds, as we did with Disintegration, but managed to create a lot of different kinds of songs with it. I think Kiss Me was more of a reference than Disintegration.”
Listening back to the album in 2022, Smith has said, “There’s a side to the album which I had kind of forgotten, a very gentle, yearning thing which is quite beautiful. Trust is one of the best things we’ve ever done, I think, it’s played with great feeling, and To Wish Impossible Things is another gorgeous, melancholic piece… in fact it could well be my favorite song on the record.”
When Wish was completed, Smith felt that they had achieved everything they had set out to do, but there was a glitch. “In the studio control room, it all sounded excellent, but I got too busy sorting out our upcoming concerts to properly oversee the mastering. It was too late to do anything about it; the album was out, and we were off around the world again. It has really bugged for me for a very long time.” Remastering the album earlier this year has finally given Smith the chance to address this “It has taken 30 years, but finally, finally, my Wish has come true.”
The Cure Wish 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Available October 7 With 24 Unreleased Tracks @ Rhino
