The Cure: Classic or Dud?

In 10 Imaginary Years, Chris Parry even says he was initially trying to duplicate his success with the Jam by finding a group that sounded like the Jam. Those early demos (disc two of Three Imaginary Boys deluxe edition) seem to indicate that this was true.

I think I heard they were described as a Southern Buzzcocks in the music press in their early days. They were certainly quite punky then but even then they seemed a bit out of sync with the rest.

I still chuckle about the fact that The Cure were originally signed to Hansa... they were part of the same competition that Japan entered to get a record deal. The Cure won, but Hansa signed Japan anyway. The Cure, of course, left for Fiction without releasing anything on Hansa, and Japan managed three albums before ending up on Virgin.

Didn't they get weird comparisons to Pink Floyd circa 17 Seconds?

https://youtu.be/MDXAIerOQSk?t=1m38s

I remember seeing a review for the remaster/deluxe edition of Seventeen Seconds that called it "Pink Floyd for stoners that didn't have anyone to smoke with."

he has the exact air of Ronnie O'Sullivan in that interview :D

Gah, no, I don't hear the Jam in them at all. Joy Division is a better comparison for early to mid-career Cure, due to the relative foregrounding of the guitar. Even at their synthiest (e.g., "Prayers for Rain") they didn't sound all that New Orderish. I agree with Josh that they mostly sounded like themselves. The poppier Cure records with horns (e.g., "Close to Me") sounded like nothing else at the time.

I grant that something like "The Walk" may have a vibe in common with pop songs by other bands that incorporated keyboards into a basic rock-band framework, but in my mind many of those songs postdate similar Cure tyoons or simply share precursors.

Maybe the sound of "Just Like Heaven" or "Letter to Elise" doesn't sound that far off from the Church or the Furs or Roxette or Dead or Alive or EMF or whatever. But none of those bands could also have coughed up anything like "Carnage Visors."

Pornography is one of the most singular records any band has ever made or will ever make

Pornography is just Joy Division's 'Atrocity Exhibition' stretched out over an entire album, but recorded with all the levels in the red and with a superior singer. Still a good record, though.

I think a lot of people are missing the original question -- not what happened a little bit later, but at the start, when they 'debuted.' Bringing in later work is an irrelevancy. To quote Austin earlier:

In 10 Imaginary Years, Chris Parry even says he was initially trying to duplicate his success with the Jam by finding a group that sounded like the Jam. Those early demos (disc two of Three Imaginary Boys deluxe edition) seem to indicate that this was true.

No, it's not the only thing, obviously. But it's a clear ghost hanging over the era, and Parry was extremely well known/influential in music industry circles, the Jam connection was incredibly clear to make when he started up Fiction. Imagine if the band had done nothing more BUT that if that'll help.

It's hard to say what kind of profile The Cure would have had if they'd done the first album and only the first album, and then split up... for all we know they could have just ended up being a post-punk era curio or, I dunno, at least a band with the profile of The Comsat Angels or something.

The Trouser Press Record Guide said that "Inbetween Days" sounded "exactly like New Order", which doesn't seem that far wrong.

yeah, the first time i heard it on the radio i really think it was a new order song until the vocals came in. i don't think that was an uncommon reaction tbh, bearing in mind that it came out just a few months after 'low-life'

Even with the Parry connection, it's very difficult for me to link The Cure with The Jam musically... in my mind, I tend to link very early Cure with yer PiL's, Magazine's and early XTC's, which they shared some elements with without wholly sounding like them. The scratchy guitar particularly.

xp: It doesn't help that "Inbetween Days" in the same key as "Dreams Never End" and uses the same I-IV chord progression with the same rhythmic cadence as its verse.

Yup. Although lots of New Order/The Cure songs have that same I-IV chord progression in a variety of keys. 'Age of Consent', 'Plainsong' etc.

I've always though it interesting how a few of the unreleased tracks from the Faith/Pornography era that surfaced are really quite cheery, almost pre-empting the Let's Go To Bed era onwards, it seems that Smith really wanted to retain a certain sombre tonality wrt the records and the public face, but then at some point in '83 he must have thought 'well, fuck it...'

I hear Wire in early Cure, not so much after SS.

At peak punk they were really out of step with other punk stuff. At peak New wave they were as stark and not new wave as it gets. The JD comparison I always thought focus too much on the gloom and not enough on the actual music, which is much less aggressive/metallic than Joy Division, which still owes much to punk or the Velvet Underground.

'Pornography is just Joy Division's 'Atrocity Exhibition' stretched out over an entire album, but recorded with all the levels in the red and with a superior singer. Still a good record, though.'

This isn't far off, but Pornography has a sort of nightmarishly psychedelic vibe that's unlike anything Joy Divison ever did.

"Atrocity Exhibition" is missing the thunder and bombast that runs throughout all the songs on Pornography

At peak punk they were really out of step with other punk stuff. At peak New wave they were as stark and not new wave as it gets. The JD comparison I always thought focus too much on the gloom and not enough on the actual music, which is much less aggressive/metallic than Joy Division, which still owes much to punk or the Velvet Underground.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, January 8, 2016 6:45 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Three Imaginary Boys came out in 1979, this was after the release of: First Issue, Black and White, Real Life, Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, White Music, Go 2, The Scream, Tubeway Army just to name a few. They weren't out of step at all - if anything, they were slightly late.

The only other soundalike besides 'in between days' IMO is 'just like heaven' which is practically a Robyn Hitchcock n' the Egyptians impersonation

This isn't far off, but Pornography has a sort of nightmarishly psychedelic vibe that's unlike anything Joy Divison ever did.

― mozart, Friday, January 8, 2016 7:05 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Atrocity Exhibition" is missing the thunder and bombast that runs throughout all the songs on Pornography

― Very selfish, and very ironic (DJP), Friday, January 8, 2016 7:29 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well yeah, this is kinda what I was referring to with the "recorded with all the levels in the red" thing. Hannett's production on 'Atrocity Exhibition', as great as it is, sounds quite thin by comparison, but you can see where it all came from: the "tribal" drumming, the squalling guitars, the emphasis on the bass.

The tribal percussion stuff extends even into the pop era, because Boris sure uses his toms a lot.

I guess in the barely punk era they do have a lot in common with other angular post punk bands. But the Cure drops that pretty quickly I think. Helps that Bob is such a different kind of singer, and that the band always had a weird knack for melody to go along with the minimalism.

By the time of Seventeen Seconds and Faith, Smith definitely had absorbed more than his fair share of Joy Division and Siouxsie & The Banshees records. John McGeogh was a definite influence on Smith's playing, particularly his work with the Banshees. Also, the "usual" influences such as Bowie - the number of times I've been listening to music on shuffle and confused the intro of 'Soul Love' with 'The Drowning Man' and vice versa is staggering.

Pre-Three Imaginary Boys Cure (The Easy Cure) were playing Status Quo and Thin Lizzy covers.

They had influences, for sure, but I don't really hear them.

Dud

So where's this fucking album, Robert?

Sorry for being a lazy bastard and not reading thru all this thread, but... The last Cure album I bought was Disintegration. Back in 1989 #ifeelold

My tangential knowledge of their catalogue since then suggests it hasn't been great. But now and again I go back to the Cure and think I may be missing out. Is there a post-Disintegration album I really, really, *really* have to own?

Bloodflowers.

Wish.

Bloodflowers is alright, but I'm not sure I would call it essential.

Bloodflowers is my least favourite, it's difficult to rank the later albums because they're mostly patchy. Get the Join The Dots compilation or The Glove side project if you don't have them.

Thanks for answering. I have Join The Dots, which is great on the whole - but the later stuff isn't so inspiring.

My prejudice tells me that Bloodflowers is awful, for some reason. Maybe the cover. I've never dared to listen to it, but maybe I should.

The Glove seems a great recommendation - thanks.

-Wish is quite frustrating because it's overall a really nice sounding album, 4 totally brilliant songs but the rest just bore me. It's probably the album I'd be most reluctant to listen to as a whole.
-Wild Mood Swings is good but spoiled by a third of the album.
-Bloodflowers is heavier and really dense and deserves credit for trying something really different, it seems like an interesting direction they could have kept going in but I just don't enjoy much of the songs.
-The Cure exists in a few different track listings. It can be a slog but I still think there's some great stuff in there.
-4:13 Dream is the most consistent of these, one of their most accessible albums ever but it doesn't have the heights of most of their albums. But I think it's fun.

The Cure was the highest placed (#12) post-Disintegration album in the poll I ran a few years ago. Bloodflowers was #14, Wild Mood Swings was #16.

I am in that camp which adores Wish but then I was 17 when it came out and would have adored anything they put out

Actually Wish was #8, missed that one.

Bloodflowers is really slow; I will concede that. It's essentially a rehash of the second half of Disintegration, but everything is really refined.

Yes, the cover art is terrible.

i guess people didn't like my Cure thread bump from yesterday.

anyways, Bloodflowers live is pretty amazing. a bunch of those songs are really good but yeah not an album i go back to often.

I think Wish is one of the band's best records, I'll often reach for that over Disintegration which I find a bit of a slog.

I think everything post-Wish is very patchy with WMS and the self-titled album having the highest high points.

here's a short* playlist of post-disintegration stuff i reckon is good

Want
Labyrinth
From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea
Doing The Unstuck
Watching Me Fall
39
Open
The Promise
End

*it's like an hour long lol - basically they became p crap at short, punchy songs, but they gained a weird knack for overwrought epics that actually work, imo jusslike

Playing Bloodflowers now. 'Out of This World' is such a damn fine opener.

as far as their later stuff goes I like 'Underneath the Stars' a lot

4:13 Dream would be much better if it didn't have such fucking shocking production.

Yup

I'd probably rank post-Disintegration like this:

Wish >>> Bloodflowers > 4:13 Dream > Wild Mood Swings > The Cure

Took the plunge and am listening to Wish on Spotify... Odd how I'm slightly scared of ruining The Cure for myself by hearing their less great output. All good so far. (And this album is 14 years old!! Where have I been?)