The Cure: Classic or Dud?

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?)

Erm, I meant 24 years old!!

The Wish b-sides are arguably better than half of what's on the proper album.

The one track I would bump from Wish would probably be 'Wendy Time', although I've never been much into 'Trust' or 'To Wish Impossible Things', either. The rest of the LP rules.

yeap, Wish is a good album. also agree with the b-sides from this era, great.

seeing them in two weeks, can't fucking wait!

Oh man, that's going to be a great show. I expect full details.

Setlist from the opening night of the tour in New Orleans:

Open
alt.end
All I Want (first performance since 1987)
Push
In Between Days
From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
Step Into the Light (new song - live debut)
Sleep When I'm Dead
A Letter to Elise (first performance since 2008)
High
The Walk
Lovesong
Just Like Heaven
Trust
Want
The Hanging Garden
One Hundred Years
End

At Night
M
Play for Today
A Forest

Dressing Up
Piggy in the Mirror
Shake Dog Shake
Give Me It

Burn

It Can Never Be the Same (new song - live debut)

I guess there'll be a new album soon then.

I am still staring at the Seventeen Seconds encore followed by the The Top encore and going "wooooooooow"

i was about to post that set list. so excited, just a few more days until i go.

Not holding my breath for a new album since those two songs are probably part of that old set of 2008 leftovers.

I don't think I listened to the last three albums more than once, and doubt I will again.

cool story

glad they played Push /danbait

I'm spinning 4:13 Dream for the first time in ages and... christ, this would totally be one of the very best of their late-period records if they'd taken the time to get it to sound decent. I honestly don't think there's a bad song on here!

I can't go that far (hi dere "The Reasons Why" and "This. Here and Now. With You") but I do agree that 4:13 Dream has very, very strong material on it that is sometimes undermined by how it was mixed, although I don't know if I really want "The Scream" or "It's Over" to be mixed any other way.

Oh, I like those two... but 'The Scream' is definitely one of my highlights, I just love the build on that.

I don't dislike them but they are, to my ears, the most ungainly songs on the album.

What about 'Switch'? I can't help but feel that one's a touch underrated!

I agree with you. I think the entire album is underrated aside from the two songs I called out.

I recall "Hungry Ghost" being the highlight.

Question for Cure nerds: Robert Smith is obviously the iconic face of the band, but the Cure has always seemed more collaborative than it gets credit for. By Kiss Me and Disintegration lots of musical ideas/demos were coming from the other guys, right? And I assume on Wish, too? So do you think the dissolution of that awesome five piece line-up (and especially the departure of Boris) sort of screw with the group's mojo enough that Smith has been having trouble coming up with the goods? Or all of them have been struggling? I imagine it's hard to keep the winning streak going as you get older, but the band's always been more or less unstable (except for that - coincidence? - super run of Head through Wish, with all its attendant, prolific b-side goodness). What's different now? Has Robert talked about writer's block?

I remember Smith saying after the last album that he was often trying to write new songs and kept scrapping them, saying "I've done this before and it was much better the first time" and that he didn't care that much if there wasn't another album.

i've always really enjoyed 4:13 Dream. What's wrong with the sound of it? The guitars sound good to me. Maybe the vocals are a little too upfront? I dunno. Please tell me!

Listen to, I dunno, 'High' from Wish back to back with, say, 'The Only One' and it should all become clear.

Apparently, after doing this, it all becomes very muddy. Except for 'High', that thing sounds great.

Yup. It all sounds a bit flat, particularly the rhythm section.

I have to say though, "This. Here and Now. With You" is kinda great.

the last two albums just don't sound good, bad mixing decisions, roger's keys all but absent. don't know what they were thinking. also, both albums entirely too long. great albums inside them though.