The Cure: Classic or Dud?

messed up that one...

good to hear some somewhat official news from them. as for the album, i'll believe it when i can actually hear it.

so indifferent about the prospect of a new Cure LP

i think the only thing that would pique my interest at all would be a lineup change or a really interesting choice of producer - get the dude from Chvrches in!

(yes i know this lineup has not actually recorded together - or does terrible single Wrong Number count here? - but it is also really unpromising IMO)

"Wrong Number" is not terrible!

love the hashtag on the RS post

Wrong Number rules, but it was recorded by COGASM, not The Cure (so 3/5 of the 2012-2022 lineup)

Wrong Number could've been so much better if it had been shorter. Doesn't need to be 6 minutes long.

I support the idea to have the dude from Chvrches to produce it. He kind of merged the sounds of both bands in "How Not To Drown" and made really great use of Robert's voice.

‘135 minutes’ is a curious length to announce in advance of shows.

That's the length of Simon's "A Forest" outro.

yah chvrches/cure collabo crossover wld be a good move

xxp they will play the 67 minute album in forwards order, take a 1 minute break, then play the songs in the reverse order

it's like they don't even remember we wanted them to release the deluxe edition of Wish

they started strong in the late 70s and dominated the whole 80s and went down hill after mixed up in 1990!

i guess the 135 minutes is like expectation management -

we are the cure and are renowned for playing 3-hr shows
but we are old and playing 3-hr shows is now difficult
so here is a number that says you will still get a long show
but you are now prepared for the fact that it isn't gonna be an endless epic

they could pick three songs and just play 45-minute versions of each one

it probably means "we will play 3 hours if we can but some venues will have curfews and support requirements but we have written a minimum amount of tine we get on stage into the contract"

"Wrong Number" is great and probably better than anything on Wild Mood Swings.

minimum amount of tine

no tuning forks

I find it so weird that despite all the teasing they still didn’t announce the new album along with the tour announcement.

"Wrong Number" is great and probably better than anything on Wild Mood Swings.

― billstevejim, Tuesday, December 7, 2021 9:27 PM

oh come on wild mood swings was pretty shite, but "wrong number" made it look like a nasa operation by comparison.

Wrong Number was ok but grated fast. One underappreciated number I keep coming back to is Cut Here. Probably their best song in last 25 years.

Both it and "Spilt Milk" are deeply underrated.

it is on my shortlist of best songs post-wish. that single to promote the greatest hits ("cut here b/w signal to noise") was definitely a lot better than its reception reflected. they only played "cut here" ??maybe twice?? live and rs went on to say that he didn't like the way it sounded when they played it in concert so he just decided not to play it. they did play "signal to noise" fairly regularly for a bit after after pearl re-joined (reportedly at their request), so it has the weird scenario of being one of only like five ever b-sides the band consistently played live. i was hoping there would be a reevaluation in the past few years after they issued that "acoustic hits" thing on vinyl (i.e., the greatest hits album in newly recorded acoustic versions) and that maybe more folks would appreciate "cut here" but alas, no.

i'm sure i've posted it before, but the "missing remix" on the cd single for "cut here" is quite good, and maybe my preferred version of the tune:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_GgwQ6yW7c

xpost ned also otm re:"spilt milk"

i understand it didn't fit in with the otherwise somber mood of bloodflowers, but the fact that it still is technically unreleased is just silly.

What also helps Cut Here is that RS actually has something to say

agreed.

♥it's about billy mackenzie♥

Ah, angst

famed gothic rockers? FAMED GOTHIC ROCKERS? AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaGH............................. https://t.co/E5amducCwC

— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) December 11, 2021

lol

at least it wasn’t “superannuated gothic rockers”

Which word does he actually take issue with? Gothic instead of goth? Rockers? Famed? This strangely neglected what?

I have half a mind to fire him from The Creatures. Oh wait.

assume it's being called gothic at all, first rule of goth club is no real goth band can admit to being a goth band

Right

otm

Tbh he probably doesn’t like Famous and Rockers either but the middle word no doubt cut the deepest.

no real goth band

important distinction.

no true gothsman

No son of mine

So then, a supposedly uncirculated concert from the short US tour of 1983 (Beverly Hills) has popped up, it's a decent - if a little roomy - recording, but it has this very odd portmanteau version of Let's Go To Bed and Forever that I've never heard before and it's kinda cool, so I thought I'd share for any interested parties.

https://www.fromsmash.com/VrU5ampcRN-bt

Thanks!

oh that is some good shit! tyvm!

rereading cured and the recollection of lol drunkenly sitting around listening to the first playback of disintegration mixes and loudly proclaiming the album to be shit in front of everyone is absolutely brutal.

i did find it interesting that he says, very off hand, that he had "one or two ideas that made it onto the record" - i had just assumed he didn't have any input after the top.

also kind of a bummer to hear him talk about andy anderson in the present tense.

but yeah, it's really good. i always took his glossing over of the band's activity in the 86-89 period as more of a self-aware comment on his own descent into full-blown addiction than an intentional shot at roger.

it has this very odd portmanteau version of Let's Go To Bed and Forever that I've never heard before and it's kinda cool

You know...I wonder if this is the version my friend ML heard live. He was an LA guy in the 80s/90s and mentioned seeing them around this time and that when they did "Let's Go To Bed" they did it as a weird bizarro version that confused all the people there who had only heard that song. I'll have to ask him if this is it!

Would that be the redoubtable ML Compton?

The very same.

Thanks for the link! I have a peculiar fascination with that period around the time that Andy was in the band, the early shows are really weird in places. Also the 1980 shows where they are figuring out the Seventeen Seconds material, I can't think of another band heading out with that much of their set in flux, Smith was singing different lyrics almost every night.

i did find it interesting that he says, very off hand, that he had "one or two ideas that made it onto the record" - i had just assumed he didn't have any input after the top.

"homesick" started out as one of lol's demos, but the rest of the band heavily rewrote it. roger has said lol's demo was ok but didn't have much going on and he figured the band only really spent time working on it so that lol didn't feel like he was completely left out.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130816025529/http://www.rogerodonnell.com/disintegration/

that's from this piece which is quite an interesting read from roger about the making of disintegration. he further clarifies that all that all they really kept from lol's "homesick" demo was the chord progression and that the final arrangement came from the band jamming over the progression, which was fairly unusual for them as most songs generally arrived with nearly-complete arrangements on their demos. roger's description of the many ways lol was bullied at the time is pretty uncomfortable though

the who-wrote-what is interesting too, i'd read that simon wrote "lovesong" but didn't know he wrote "the same deep water as you" and "untitled" as well, and roger takes credit for two of the b-sides from that era, "out of mind" and "fear of ghosts". are there any other cure tracks that it's established that anyone other than robert wrote most of? they're one band that i feel like there's never been a whole lot of insight provided into their internal creative dynamics.

that's awesome info, thank you!

always loved "fear of ghosts" and just assumed roger had taken the lead on that arrangement - nice.

i think they keep the credits pretty democratic on purpose, but i've long suspected simon has a lot more involvement than it would perhaps appear on the surface. i've seen it mentioned multiple times that "lovesong" was one of his demos that robert wrote lyrics to. i seem to recall "fascination street" being a similar thing. also know that at least half of the material that ended up on kiss me kiss me kiss me came from not robert/mostly simon.

Maresn3st: really enjoyed that live recording, btw - thank you again for sharing!

You're welcome!

i don't think "fascination street" was one of simon's, robert's home demo of it was on one of the disintegration reissues

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/cure-robert-smith-disintegration-interview-886034/

this more recent interview with robert is funny - he talks about passing notes to roger to give him feedback as a silly acid-inspired attempt to create a certain atmosphere, while roger's memory of it was thinking maybe he was too hungover to speak properly? he also recalls that only one of simon's demos made the album apart from "lovesong", but doesn't say which