The Cure 2004 (eponymous)

Because I haven't listened to this album in years I downloaded it to my phone yesterday and listened to it during my school pick up walk. Promptly deleted download.

Hahahahahsh

Same for me, I quite like some of the tracks individually but the album just sounds horrible.

"Appart"?

Apart is on Wish (and it's awesome btw).
Maybe you meant Anniversary?

Lost has always rubbed me off the wrong way, but I think Labyrinth is actually a good song, although held back by suboptimal production (weird effects on the voice, etc).

Going Nowhere is one of the best songs they have done in their "Lesser Era" (from Wild Moods Swings onwards).

A couple of the best songs from the 2004 bunch were inexplicably left out (Please Come Home and A Boy I Never Knew). Well, maybe not inexplicably: it might be that RS felt they were too personal and didn't fit. But they would have raised the quality level of the album.

But overall there's a lot of "at best b-side level" material on this album (Taking Off, I Don't Know What's Going On, The End of the World, alt.end, Anniversary, Never, especially Never!!!, ...).

It's just that most songs on the album are uninspired replicas of stuff they had done much better in the past (just one example for all: Taking Off > Just Like Heaven, Friday I'm in Love) and the production is so bad.

For me from eponymous to bestival is the worst period of The Cure.