By YH Etheart

So when I went to Mr. Editor, and told him my Selection of the Week hadn’t been released yet, he kind of accused me of being difficult. But I swear that I’m not—it’s just that I’m so excited about the Selection that I’m treating it like it’s already here.

For the past six years, Rhino Records (Universal in the UK) has been re-releasing all of the Cure’s studio albums, and we’ve finally arrived at the band’s magnum opus, 1989’s Disintegration, aka The Album that Saved My Life. Well, saved it in the melodramatic high school way, of course; most people have that piece of art or literature or music that opens (or reopens) the door to a bigger, more complicated, more complex world—a thinking person’s world—and Disintegration did that for me. (“Put down that Def Leppard CD, old chum,” the nice Englishman seemed to say. “Step away from the Colour Me Badd. Here, slip into this black trenchcoat. Do you like girls with bowl cuts?”)

But that’s not just my opinion—Disintegration remains the band’s commercial and critical peak, and the upcoming Deluxe Edition would seem to reflect that. The other reissues have followed the standard format—remastered main album plus a bonus disc of home demos, unreleased tracks, and live performances—but this time around, we get three CDs: the original album, the disc of rarities (which includes four never-released songs), and a real gift: Entreat, a live promotional album recorded at Wembley Arena during the 1989 Prayer Tour (which almost destroyed the band and certainly changed its internal dynamic for good). It was heavily bootlegged before it received a limited (European-only) release. This version is remastered and expanded to include all 12 songs from Disintegration; in a lot of ways, I’m more excited for Entreat than the other two discs.

I’ve really enjoyed the Cure reissues, and, much like the original album itself, the release of the Deluxe Edition of Disintegration is the beginning of the end. While there will probably be enough quality tracks for the re-releases of Mixed Up and Wish, it’s all diminishing returns after that. (And anyone who tells you that they’re waiting to buy $20 versions of Bloodflowers or *shudder* Wild Mood Swings is a dirty goddamn liar.)

The Deluxe Edition of Disintegration will be released on May 25th, 2010.