The Cure: Classic or Dud?

The idea is to encourage people to be forthright in their opinion but it's not a vote or anything. It's a catchier way of saying "what do you think of this band?"

Cheers!

(PS: Dud. A couple of the singles are nice musically, even very good, but they have Smith's horrible smeared moan over the top of them. He sounds like a fourteen-year-old with a splinter in his toe: there's something wheedling about his voice which makes me want to smack him and tell him to get a grip rather than empathise with him.)

Seriously.. though it seems the norm to slag 'em off these days, it's amazing just how much good stuff they have done. 'Boy's Don't Cry'/'3 Imaginary Boys' is a great debut, whichever version you have. Scratchy wired glum-pop. In fact it's all classic up to 'The Top', their first major clunker.

'Head on the Door' is great pop. 'Kiss Me X3' is also great pop ('Just Like Heaven'), except where they try too hard to make great pop and fail ('Hot, Hot, Hot'). 'Disintegration' is their last great album. But not pop. No problem.

My last encounter with The Cure was 'Wild Mood Swings'. I swung my copy back from whence it came - Record and Tape Exchange. Still, 'Galore' sums up the later years nicely.

Anyway I like old Bob, a pop man at heart even in his gloomiest moments.

Classic. And if you disagree with me I'll shove all twenty or so CDRs of rare and odd stuff I have of theirs down your throat and kill you. *proceeds to light candles to huge _Disintegration_ poster in room*

The Cure are a band who, like Depeche Mode and a number of others of that ilk, should have just hung it up on December 31, 1989. Their glory days were in the 1980s, Disintegration should have been their last album. It would have been a perfect ending. Instead, they chose to put out three subpar releases in the 1990s. While Bloodflowers was a definite improvement over Wild Mood Swings (did *anyone* like that album?) and Wish (which came out at the peak of my Cure fandom and still disappointed me), it still wasn't close to the material they released during the 1980s.

Yeah, some of their stuff is whiny and pretentious. But I think they manage to pull it off reasonably well, and I think the whininess and the pretentiousness will make them staples of every sad-sack high school kid for the next thirty years, whether they continue to release new albums or not. (And hopefully they won't, judging from the poor quality of their most recent albums--I think that the more bad stuff they release, the less "legendary" they'll become.)

By the way, I *was* a teenage goth girl. I was also an early-20s goth girl. I own a velvet and lace cape and little pointy boots and black lipstick. Heh.

_Wild Mood Swings_ is more problematic. It's a very erratic album and contains a couple of songs that never should have seen the light of day ("Mint Car", "Return"). However, it also contains the absolutely marvelous "The 13th", "Want", "Gone!" and "Jupiter Crash". Some judicious editing (and swapping some album tracks for b-sides) would make this a much better album.

For me, _Bloodflowers_ compares very well to their 80's output. It seems that the group got back into a good songwriting groove for this album, which is particularly evident on "Out Of This World", "The Loudest Sound", "The Last Day Of Summer", "Bloodflowers", and "Watching Me Fall" (Cure cliches and all). The album has a strong sense of flow and there are no embarrassing attempts to rewrite "Friday I'm In Love". It was a good ending for them, assuming that Robert's latest pronouncements about the band's demise are actually true this time.

There are individual songs I don't like, and _Wild Mood Swings_ is easily my least- favorite of their albums, but I'd be hard-pressed to say that I actively dislike any of the Cure's albums.

They have many good tunes. However, they have many bad ones, viz "Friday I'm In Love".

Still, at their best they show an impressive ability to make both poppy goth jumpathons and total doomfests.

I had a girlfriend once who was into these boys hard and she used to play is it 'Pictures of You' (?) over and over and over (a sort of pining for a lost love I think; not me, incidentally). Anyway, it used to bore the hell out of me, not to mention what felt like a large hole in my brain.

The thing is, with the Cure, it's like the Manic Street FUCKING Preachers syndrome - people who like 'em don't just like 'em, they fucking LOVE 'em, and think they're prophets or something. No, they are miserable, half-goths with absolutely nothing to say and even less charisma.

That said, I am admit that I am hardly familiar know their canon, since I can't bear exposure to it for protracated periods.

Still; DUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUD

Hmm, having said that, I do get riled when someone fails to 'get' my favourite bands and indulges in the kind of mindless attack I have already posted against The Cure. Yet, I feel that certain bands are wont to attract a more dependent following, who hang the band's music like metaphorical rosaries. And I'm not sure that even among my most beloved artists, there are those which I could hold in such equally mindless esteem.

What say you?

DUD

Yet I do wonder how much my own nosatlgia plays a role. I still think Wish is great, despite every. review. ever. written. Maybe if I hadn't listened to it for the 1st time as a teenager travelling thru Europe with schoomates I'd think differently.

Also, I really really like the Wolfgang Press song on _Lonely is an Eyesore_, but I've heard their recordings are pretty patchy. Any recommendations there?

the "cure=suburbia" part of Michael Bracewell's England Is Mine is one of the best things ever!

Classic, BTW. Again, my mid-teens coincided with Disintegration and I was full-on obsessed for a couple of years. I bought a shedload of albums at Oxfam last year, and a friend and I drove our GF/wives insane by listening, back to back, to 17 Seconds, Faith, Pornography and the Top. Divorce was on the horizon by the end of that evening.

Thing is, there are SO many B-sides and rarities which have officially surfaced that they'd have to put out a box set. As it is, if the remasters that are surfacing next year are going to include bonus discs for each with room for other oddities, then that will partially settle the problem.

on BBC 6 Music between now and 7.30pm Robert Smith is being interviewed.

You can catch up later on BBC Sounds.

and at 7.30pm to 8pm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002xtxb

Highlights from The Cure at Primavera Sound 2026.

Chat with Robert Smith at Primavera 2026
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002x7bk
This episode will be available soon

Get ready for New Music

🚨 New Cure album update!

Robert Smith has confirmed in a new BBC Radio 6 interview that the next The Cure album is finished and ready to be delivered. He also hinted that a third album is still part of the plan.

After years of waiting for Songs of a Lost World, it looks like… pic.twitter.com/7QEGodT60C

— The Fanbase files (@dror_nahum) June 8, 2026

Yeah, not gonna fall for that just quite yet…

In Bob we trust.

him saying it's ready for release is a little different than saying it's almost done, no?

I think he was saying the next record was already recorded back when SOALW came outside

'about to be delivered to universal' at least gives me some room for optimism that it might actually be happening

and yeah he'd previously talked about how they'd recorded two albums worth of material during the songs of a lost world sessions

the fact that the last album was received with love instead of indifference might change the equation a bit

last night in Austria, no live stream but another ! setlist

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-cure/2026/pannonia-fields-ii-blue-stage-nickelsdorf-austria-5341f309.html

"Shake Dog Shake," "100 Years" and "Plainsong" :swoon:

Tonight: Firenze Rocks - no live streams for any of the previous days, so probably none today either.

On BBC6 Robert said they have rehearsed 55 songs for this Summer festival tour, so we're not done yet :-)

look forward to that elusive Descent / Splintered In Her Head / Happy The Man encore

I *think* they played Happy The Man once or twice in 1984? I should check, they did do Splintered in '81 fairly regularly.

Yeah it was part of the standard setlist on the Top tour. Love that one and all the bsides from that 1983-1985 period

A Fragile Thing had its tour debut yesterday

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-cure/2026/ippodromo-del-visarno-florence-italy-6b4c2eda.html

... I had NO idea any of this existed: the Pornography LSD Soaked Supercut, all 1982 session/TV versions (Siamese Twin with violins and ballet dancers) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7ZVKQOrQ-g

The in-studio version of “FIGURE HEAD” which opens that is one of my all time Cure favourites. Seeing them actually in those sessions was like finding footage of the pyramids being built or something.

Also peak Roberts Smith/Pattinson crossover

really like the version of "primary" (36:10) more in your face, vocals more up front.

On Saturday, they're headlining the Pinkpop Festival (after Editors) - there's going to be a livestream on Friday-Saturday-Sunday, several bands are announced already, just not the headliners.
Maybe those haven't decided if they want to be live streamed yet (Friday: Twenty One Pilots / Saturday: The Cure / Sunday: Foo Fighters) - this is the current schedule and also the page where the stream should be:

https://3voor12.vpro.nl/artikelen/pinkpop-livestream-tijdschema-2026

^ update: The Cure has been added to the streaming schedule. The complete set, two hours, Saturday

mailing list links:

Pinkpop, Saturday evening https://www.thecure.com/news/live/pinkpop/

Isle of Wight Festival, Sunday evening, UK ONLY :( - https://www.sky.com/watch/isle-of-wight-festival-2026

Thanks for all these updates StanM, as this point in time shows are fun to keep track of.

oh they are showing bits of some festival on sky arts tonight which is free to air. i wonder if Sunday night will also be? yes, according to TV listings

I hope that Pinkpop link on TheCure.com works because that VPRO livestream is geofenced after all, only visible in the NL (unless you VPN I guess)

doesn't look like we'll have any live streams this weekend after all :(

That’s weird Stan, I’m watching it without any problems here in Flanders

That link did just not show any stream for me on any of my browsers or devices - I don't get it. Anyway, I'm happy for you I guess :(

I'll find it somewhere, no worries :-)

Simon had a black eye?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joIICfW-Tw8

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-cure/2026/megaland-south-stage-landgraaf-netherlands-634c9a4b.html

Charlotte Sometimes! (and they messed up Fascination Street)

Watching the opening there, I think it's sunk in that "Alone" is one of their all-time great songs, top ten even. It packs an emotional wallop.

in the uk, sky arts / sky mix (both freeview) tonight for Isle of Wight festival show. 9 to 11:15 it says but I'm not sure how much of that is the cure's set

Going to see them this Wednesday and there's a Red Extreme Heat warning in effect now

I fear for Bob's eyeliner

Jeez that’s a bit of a concern, playing a 2-3 hour set in your mid-late 60s and not exactly Captain Athletic (altho no doubt match-fit).

Robert Smith on this track, allegedly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mUf_DGhygA

(on guitar only so, it's not like you'd know)

can maybe sort of hear him under the chorus? if I squint