"4:13 Dream" by the Cure

I've been thinking a lot about their 1997+ output and I seriously believe they've released a string of flat-out brilliant songs that have had the misfortune of being spread out across multiple albums/b-sides. That list would include:

Jupiter Crash
Treasure
It Used To Be Me
Home
Out Of This World
The Loudest Sound
Lost
Labyrinth
Anniversary
Going Nowhere
Underneath The Stars
The Scream
It's Over
The Only One
All Kinds Of Stuff

I put together a two CD collection of B-sides/one-offs/etc. from 2000 to now that's essentially a continuation of Join the Dots -- I'll dig up the tracklisting here when I'm home...

um help, I srsly can't stop listening to this

I thought the Portishead album was going to beat this for me this year but apparently I'd forgotten exactly how much uncritical lizard-brain affection I have for The Cure

Actually, wouldn't that make a great tour, the two of them together.

+ Santogold

I need to get back to this album. As a lot of posters here it seems, I love the songs, especially RS's vocals on this (which for me had been the weak point of the last releases) bu the compression is really preventing me from playing it on repeat

Two weeks on, I must have played 'Hungry Ghost' 50 times already. For some reason that song really sticks out for me

That song's been coming to mind a lot too, especially the chorus. I don't suppose there'll be another single from this but it would be an interesting choice.

Not a big fan of this album a few spins later. I think the self-titled record may be better, actually.

I think this album is a lot better than The Cure, and I'm on of the few people around here who still likes that album.

btw "The Real Snow White" and "The Hungry Ghost" grew on me massively over the weekend

oh hey I just read [nabisco]'s review; obv I disagree with the score and the conclusions drawn but it's a great write-up

"I think this album is a lot better than The Cure, and I'm on of the few people around here who still likes that album"

I am the other one who thinks this album is quite good. Obviously, we are right and the rest of the world is ridicolously wrong. : )

Yay us! ("The Hungry Ghost" is rapidly turning into a massive favorite, that's an astonishing chorus.)

saddened by absence of "Watching Me Fall" from Dan's mixtape (for reasons of space?), altho I haven't rly listened to Bloodflowers much save for that song

maybe tonight is the night I give it a full appraisal

"Watching Me Fall" is a great song but it's WAAAAAAAAY too pompous. I like it a lot but the other Bloodflowers songs I listed are much better IMO.

well I'm a sad-sack pomposity-junkie who thinks "The Promise" is the best song they've done since "End", new album notwithstanding

and yeah I'm gonna give Bloodflowers a proper listen, let's do this

Have you heard "This Morning"?

nope, haven't. is it a soundtrack number/single?

ah it's a The End Of The World b-side, and a promising 7 minutes long! ;-)

It's really, really, really, really great; probably the best description of it would be a weird hybrid of "It Used To Be Me" and "Fear Of Ghosts".

btw it should have been on my list upthread, I have no idea why I left it off

Robert: still peeved at UMG:

APOLOGIES TO THOSE THOUSANDS WHO BOUGHT 4:13 DREAM ON ITUNES AND DIDNT GET ANY ARTWORK OR BOOKLET

NEEDLESS TO SAY

IT WASNT INTENTIONAL

NOR WAS IT OUR FAULT

I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO GET IT FIXED...

BUT...

ITS MERELY DRIVEN ME TO ANOTHER EXPOSE OF THE KAFKAESQUE WORLD THE MIGHTY U MOVE IN...

AN EXAMPLE OF THE CORRESPONDENCE SO FAR?

>

TO:

<INSERT NAME HERE OF MAN HIGH UP THE MIGHTY U FOODCHAIN>

DO UMG HAVE SOMETHING AGAINST US?

PLEASE TELL ME!

AS I AM FINDING IT MORE AND MORE DIFFICULT TO RECONCILE THE DIFFICULTIES WE FACE IN OUR DEALINGS WITH THE COMPANY

"Due to an internal miscommunication the “iTunes” version which has a different UPC was not scheduled which is why the booklet did not get delivered."

WHAT KIND OF "INTERNAL MISCOMMUNICATION"?

THE SAME KIND THAT HAD "HYPNAGOGIC STATES EP" UP ON ITUNES WITH THE WRONG TRACKLISTING AND SELLING @ £4 MORE THAN WE AGREED?

WHY DOES NO-ONE EVER TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THESE "MISTAKES"?

AND DO YOU REALLY THINK THIS

"With regards those who have already purchased the album, unfortunately they will not be able to receive it but anyone who purchases from 10th will get the booklet – there will be 2 versions available, with and without the booklet"

IS A FAIR RESPONSE?

IN NO WAY INSULTING TO THE THOUSANDS OF CURE FANS WHO HAVE BOUGHT OUR ALBUM ON ITUNES?

WE NEED TO MAKE THE BOOKLET AVAILABLE NOW TO EVERYONE WHO HAS BOUGHT OR WILL BUY THE ALBUM BEFORE NOVEMBER 10TH - PLEASE CONFIRM THIS WILL BE DONE

(AND WHY ON EARTH WOULD WE WANT 2 VERSIONS AVAILABLE? WHY WOULD WE WANT A VERSION WITHOUT A BOOKLET? IF WE DID WHY WOULD WE BE SENDING ANY OF THESE EMAILS?!!)

DO UMG HAVE SOMETHING AGAINST US?

PLEASE JUST TELL ME...

THANKS

RS

why doesn't he just put a pdf on the cure website or something?

Okay, fair points all, but it might help things out if Bob could write like a normal human being and not like a 5-year-old that just learned how to use e-mail.

I'm pretty surprised you put The Only One on that list, Dan. Along with Sirensong, it's the only track that I often skip on the new one.

I really adore that song. I love the guitar tone, I love the breezy tempo, I love the turns the chord progression takes in the chorus and I love oh I love oh I love how he structures the verse with innocent images and dirty words; I love all the repetition, it makes me smile.

I got a nice e-mail from Apple yesterday telling me my booklet was now available for download. Really, they shouldn't have bothered. Because it's not a very good booklet. Hey ho.

and yeah I'm gonna give Bloodflowers a proper listen, let's do this

I went back and listened to it again for the first time in years. And you know what? It's gorgeous. So much so that, umm, it's slightly overshadowed 4:13 Dream for me.

I'm sorry to say this, but Bloodflowers is a hundred times better than 4:13 Dream could ever hope to be.

YouTube commenters are really laying into Jason the drummer.

I'm sorry to say this, but Bloodflowers is a hundred times better than 4:13 Dream could ever hope to be.

OTM, but it might be more because of that tour than anything else for me.
4:13 is much better than their last album but hardly in the mood to play it despite being a huge Cure head. i think i need to wait until becomes colder but being in Southern California, that might be awhile.

The highlight of the three shows I caught on the 2008 tour, for me, was finally seeing them do Out of This World, Maybe Someday and Bloodflowers in Houston. Much, much better than any of the new songs, and they stand nicely against the back catalog material as well. Three totally classic songs!

Okay so there's TWO new Cure tribute albums out, the one mentioned above with Bats for Lashes that I need to get around to and then there's this one:

http://www.alr-music.com/curetribute/mediapage.php

Mix and a match so far but the Dean and Britta take on "Friday I'm in Love" is great.

As time has gone on, this album remains all about the bookending songs for me (first two, last two) with most of the songs in the middle jockeying for position as fifth-favorite. I still don't like "This, Here and Now, With You", though.

Should i really dare listen to this? I'm a long-term flyer of the "they should've called it a day after Wish" flag and haven't bought a new Cure release since that album, but many reviews make me think I ought to hear this.

I would at least listen to "Underneath The Stars", "The Scream" and "It's Over".

it's alright

I quite like it - without buying the "best album since XYZ" hype, I enjoy most of the songs and its overall simplicity. No big statements, just good pop songs and a couple of absolute highlights.
Thats why it's their best album since etc... : )

Marco completely OTM. Just a straight up pop-rock album and that's exactly what I wanted them to do at this point

faves being "Hungry Ghost", "Sleep When I'm Dead", "Perfect Boy" and the last two - which is quite a lot already

I guess Angelinos already know this but just in case, the Cure will be playing KROQ's acoustic xmas this w-e.

more pop to come! :)

i've listened to the new cure tribute album "perfect as cats" more than i've listened to this.

blackblack's cover of in between days rocks my socks.

So they're playing Las Vegas and all.

A recent interview with some bits, including more on the next album:

It was a less acrimonious split than that in 1989 with the Cure’s former drummer, founding member and chronic booze-hound Lol Tolhurst, who unsuccessfully sued Smith for unpaid royalties five years later.

Smith giggles ruefully. “The funniest thing about him taking us to court, or taking me to court in particular, was that he couldn’t actually remember all the things that would’ve won him the case at a f***ing stroke. I almost felt obliged morally to stand up and say: ‘Lol, don’t you remember the time that . . .’

“The worst thing we did to Lol was when me and Simon stripped him on the bus. We were pulling up to a hotel in Chicago, it was about five in the morning, we’re saying: ‘We’re going to a health club, Lol, we’re all gonna get a rub-down’. ‘Awloveeelovegreat.’ ‘We’re going to strip now and it’s straight out of the bus door, straight into a hot tub.’ He’s like: ‘Riiightoootherewaaghh’. So we pretend to take our trousers off and he actually takes his trousers off and his pants and at the bottom of the hotel steps there’s a porter with one of those luggage things with wheels. So we put Lol on it and go: ‘Into the hot tub!’ and we push him through reception of the Chicago Hilton. Simon rolls Lol into the lift and goes, ‘You f***ing idiot’ and the lift doors close.”

...

...they emerged with 33 songs completed, 13 of which made up, last October, the upbeat and experimental return to form, 4:13 Dream. Most of the rest will form the second, “dark”, half to that record’s lightness. Smith hopes to release it this year.

“It’s the companion piece, the nightmare piece to the dream thing,” he explains. “4:13 Dream ends on a dark minor chord and I feel like there’s an intermission and everyone goes out and goes: ‘Ooh, I wonder what’s going to happen next.’ The next one picks up where the last one ended.”

...

He’s intensely critical of his own label’s reluctance to let him put out the Olympic songs as a double set and plain livid when it comes to the download revolution. “It’s staggering the percentage of illegal downloads,” he says. “It’s almost silly in a tragic way. There’s a strange reluctance on the part of the majors [to tackle the issue]. Their artists suffer hugely from illegal downloading: they don’t sell legal units so the label doesn’t really have to pay them. But the label is owned by a parent company some way down the chain that owns the internet service provider. That side of it is very murky.

“The Radiohead experiment of paying what you want — I disagreed violently with that. You can’t allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise you don’t consider what you do to have any value at all, and that’s nonsense. If I put a value on my music and no one’s prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan, it can’t work.”

Though softly spoken and giggly, Smith displays signs of being the oldest Angry Young Man in music (he will be 50 in April). And who can blame him: he’s credited with inventing a goth scene that he constantly disowns (“Most goth kids look really cool; I think those people would be horrified by the idea of us representing them”), is criticised for retaining his spider hair and make-up well into middle age (“The idea of growing old gracefully is immaterial. I look at myself and I’m kind of on the cusp at the moment. But I’m hanging in there”) and has been the focus of blame for some of his fans’ most violent extremes.

“I’ve been in the unfortunate position of having someone kill themselves onstage just prior to us going on,” he recalls with a shudder. “It was hugely disturbing. We were playing the Kiss Me set [1987-88] and it was an upbeat kind of night, but there was an emotional depth to the stage show that was put in perspective when that happened.

“It’s happened to us a few times. A policeman blew his brains out at the show in Czechoslovakia on that tour and on the Bloodflowers tour [200-2001] someone killed himself. It’s the ultimate theatre I suppose. It’s very difficult to sit on your own thinking about it, let alone get into the kind of mentality to do that public a thing.”

One suicide note sent to him by a fan was made into the lyrics of 4:13 Dream’s deceptively poppy The Reasons Why, including the line: “I won’t try to bring you down about my suicide/ If you promise not to sing about the reasons why.”

Whole thing's worth a read.

playing 'The Only One' now! maybe they will play it tonight.

I still don't believe that dark companion piece will ever come out.

i live in the Los Angeles area and Coachella is happening next weekend. because of the company that i work for, we deal with a lot of these type of bands. so today i picked up a band member from The Cure, it wasn't one of the main four but he is in the band. so i started my conversation and he says "yeah, i'm here for Coachella and with a band that you might have heard of called The Cure." i had a heart attack, i said not only have i heard of them but they are my favorite band of all time. so i started to ask questions and one of them was "is the 'nightmare' album going to come out this year?" he said that he doubt it and that they are done with Geffen Records, but i remember reading somewhere that they have one more record under contract with them. that album is done but he thinks Robert will sit on it and will release sometime in the future but not on Geffen and not this year. he said that the band is going to probably take a year off, than go from there. they are going to play in Las Vegas than they are off to Coachella with no more dates for the rest of this year.

i also have huge My Bloody Valentine news and will tell that story when i bump that thread.

i also met Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth yesterday, wanted to kiss her feet...

i also have huge My Bloody Valentine news and will tell that story when i bump that thread.

GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO

it wasn't one of the main four but he is in the band.

uh huh

but he thinks Robert will sit on it and will release sometime in the future

a completely different uh huh

Err, there are four band members these days, so was it like a roadie or sth?

shut up, Bee OK TOTALLY has a Candaian boyfriend!