I hate The Cure, always have. That is, I find Robert Smith to be a fantastic songwriter but I can’t stand all of the mope-rock, woe-is-me bullshit. And the artsy-fartsy poses, my god. It’s relevant here because without the Cure, and its contribution to rock’s history, we wouldn’t have Brooklyn post-punk goth rock foursome Blacklist and the band’s debut album Midnight of the Century.Now, Blacklist isn’t a direct rip-off of the Cure’s sound; it’s only two-thirds of it. The final third of the band channels the chiming guitar of U2. And for the majority of the album, the band makes this UCure2 combo work. ‘Julie Speaks’ and ‘Flight of the Demoiselles’ have beautiful, soaring guitar melodies. Hell, The Edge might even consider replacing a portion of No Line with a few of these. The music ”“ most of it, anyway ”“ is that good. Sure, there’s maybe a little too much borrowing on some tracks (‘Odessa’ and ‘Poison for Tomorrow’), but on the whole the seemingly oddball mix meshes quite well. Accompanying those is frontman Josh Strawn’s vocal interpretation of goth rock. Think a cross between Ian McCulloch if he were singing above the music instead of through it and Tom Smith attempting to be Bono. Granted, he’s a tad too melodramatic and even slightly enigmatic, but don’t let either blind you from the fact that it makes his performance appealing throughout Century.But that doesn’t excuse the lyrical content. It’s sometimes ridiculous, sometimes insipid and always gruel that never lets up. ‘Shock in the Hotel Falcon’, for example, is simply a series of call-to-arms statements that are so vague the supposed enemy becomes irrelevant, buried under a pile of empty platitudes and nonsensical images. Witness the chorus: “Today we’re looking over our shoulders/ Tonight they’re rounding up the traitors/ Open season on the outlaws running free/ They’ve got shock troops in the hotel falcon/ It’s a game of betrayal because you’re not just like them/ Walking shadows in the contraband brigade.” Even with context that’s incoherent. Or how about the opening lines to ‘Language of the Living Dead’: “We come apart, it’s a case of convictions/ A magnetic play with a negative spin/ And after all we’ve tried, it makes too much difference/ We speak in too many different tongues.” It appears the song is about how people today can’t communicate with each other but, again, with how vague the lyrics are the song could be about anything else just as easily. Who the hell knows? And that’s the problem.In a 2009 interview with The Big Takeover, Strawn made it a point to stress “the beauty of ambivalence” with regard to lyrics. He went on to argue that the Fleetwood Mac song ‘Peacekeeper’ is “brilliant” because he didn’t know if it was pro-war, anti-war or “whether it was about personal relationships or about nations.” It’s a shame because Blacklist has a similar problem, though I’m not sure it was intentional. Strawn believes in what he’s singing and puts all possible effort into it. Thus, his effort, though valiant, is nonetheless pointless. It’s plainly a waste of great shimmering melodies, a superb take on goth rock, and even splendid musicianship. The sad thing is that I’m not sure which is worse: either the guys rushed through the lyrics in order to finish the album, or these are the best lyrical ideas they could create. If you feel inspired enough to venture over to the band’s MySpace page and listen to a track or two, and you happen to like what you hear, just ignore the lyrics. Otherwise you’ll never make it through an entire song.