Robert Smith feat. Mogwai and Vibe Culture – Pictures of You Review

Not even Robert Smith of The Cure can resist the temptations that have struck U2, Taylor Swift and Marianne Faithfull. Re-releases, re-recordings, re-masterings. Each has its place. Swift has the reasonable argument of reclaiming her work. U2 have the unreasonable argument of presuming talent does not fade. Pictures of You marks not a reworking of the track but a change of personnel. Vibe Culture and Mogwai are swapped in, taking on The Cure’s classic track. Key to any good mix is understanding that the vocals are usually not the problem. Change the instrumentals, sure, they are apparently moments that produce a spitting-in-the-wind quality, ever changeable. Pictures of You is proof that is not the case. A harmless Vibe Culture remix follows.

But one of The Cure’s finest tracks should not be labelled harmless. This mix takes the bite out of the track, bulks up the running time and does nothing to improve on the original. It is still a decent listen. Of course it is. Smith’s vocal presence is intact and clear in this piece. “Remembering you, how you used to be” is a spit of irony now that the track has been changed just enough to warrant a re-release. Its dream-pop placement removes the reverb and tempo of the original track, a gorgeous inclusion on Disintegration now remix fodder for talented pairings. Scottish rock workings from Mogwai are the real quality here, closer to a cover where Smith insisted on staying on the track than anything else.

Insistence of that type keeps the powerful notions of Pictures of You secure. Whatever the instrumentals hope to achieve can be belayed somewhat by consistency at the core. Mogwai manage a fine sound, they embellish Pictures of You with their Scottish rock stylings, but that change does little for the message. Mogwai’s string sections and moments of intrigue are clear throughout this piece, a nice, long-form song that gets a bit heavy-handed with its drums. Appreciating this rendition of Pictures of You is the same as listening to a filtered version of the original. In fact, Smith and Mogwai’s work on this is heavy and available elsewhere. Vibe Culture appears to be the fault. An echoed reverb added, an extension of the solo properties of a track that is totally dependent on lyrical class, that is all it amounts to. What a strange feat. It works, it is The Cure and Robert Smith and Mogwai after all, but what an oddity.

Vibe Culture is the out-of-place presence here. Their mix does a bit of damage to the Smith and Mogwai collaboration it hopes to riff on. Lacking the powerful strikes of Smith’s vocal range and burying it under echoes of string and richer focus on the instrumentals is a bizarre change of pace that never picks up. Pictures of You remains best in its original form, enjoyable in its Mogwai inclusion and bearable in its Vibe Culture mix. It is hard to kill the quality of a brilliant track but this mix from Vibe Culture reduces the impact into a style that does not suit the gorgeous, lush vocal stylings Smith brought all those years ago.